MIAMI – FIRST ON FOX: The only Cuban-born member of Congress hosted Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó and several Venezuelan and Colombian community leaders from the U.S. in a show of support for President Trump’s reversal of a Biden-era oil deal with Caracas’ dictator.
“This is personal to me,” said Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., who hosted the gathering at a private lounge inside Miami International Airport on Thursday.
There, he lambasted Nicolas Maduro and condemned the idea that the U.S. under former President Joe Biden had ever concocted a deal with the dictator in the first place.
On Wednesday, Trump canceled a deal that had allowed Chevron to operate inside oil-rich Venezuela, saying the U.S. would “revers[e] concessions that Crooked Joe Biden gave to Nicolas Maduro… on the oil transaction agreement [from] 2022 and also having to do with electoral conditions within Venezuela which have not been met…”
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó speaks at Miami International Airport on Thursday. (Charlie Creitz)
Trump also noted Maduro was not cooperating with U.S. immigration authorities trying to deport violent illegal aliens.
In Miami, Gimenez said in response to a reporter’s question about Tren de Aragua members wreaking havoc in New York City that there is a major difference between Venezuelan civilians fleeing oppression and criminals illegally sneaking into the U.S. that are of a certain descent.
Gimenez noted how he and his family “fled for freedom” from a similar dictatorship in Cuba and that therefore any individual or group persecuted by dictatorial governments will “always have a friend in me.”
“So will [Florida Republican Rep.] Mario [Diaz-Balart], so will [Florida Republican Rep.] Maria [Salazar], and so will [Sen.] Rick Scott, and so will President Donald J. Trump,” Gimenez said before introducing several leaders, including Guaidó.
In an exclusive interview afterward with Fox News Digital, Gimenez said Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua are “all pretty much tied together” in the fact they are dictatorial regimes repressing their own people, who yearn to be free.
“I expect this is just the first step in trying to liberate these countries. The people of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua deserve freedom,” he said.
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Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., speaks to Fox News Digital at Miami International Airport. (Charlie Creitz)
Gimenez said the answer should be to convert the “enemy states” into friends of the U.S., noting there is national interest on multiple levels.
Cuba, for instance, is less than 90 miles off the maritime border of Gimenez’s own district in Key West.
“I’m confident that President Trump understands this, and he stands for freedom and he stands for democracy; not only in the United States, but in our hemisphere and around the world,” he said.
During the gathering, Guaidó also offered remarks in Spanish praising Trump and slamming Central American despots.
“[W]e need a strong, prosperous and safe Latin America – and one that will be safe, with democracy and freedom,” he said.
“I have no doubt in President Trump, and in the message that he is sending directly to the heart of those who financed the coup d’état perpetrated by the dictatorship on July 28, 2024 (the disputed/corrupt re-election of Maduro)…,” he said.
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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro delivers the annual address at Teatro Teresa Carreno in Caracas on Jan. 15. (Jesus Vargas/Getty)
“It is accurate, correct and timely to confront that dictatorship and also [send] a message to those who today usurp [power] in Cuba and Nicaragua that they will not have impunity,” Guaidó added.
In further remarks to Fox News Digital, Gimenez said he has full faith in his fellow Miamian, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in his and Foggy Bottom’s ability to confront these regimes that lie within America’s own hemisphere.
“I don’t have to speak to the secretary of state about Cuba; we both have Ph.D’s in that,” he quipped.
