by WorldTribune Staff, September 10, 2025 Real World News
As he was deploying troops to his country’s borders, Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro on Monday declared the Christmas will again come early in the South American nation.
“Once again this year, Christmas starts on October 1 with joy, commerce, activity, culture, carols,” dancing and traditional foods, Maduro declared.
In 2024, Maduro declared an early Christmas amid the election, widely believed to be rigged, that saw him win another 6-year term as president.
This year, Maduro said on his weekly TV program “Con Maduro +” that he wants to defend “the right to happiness” of Venezuelans, amid an escalating standoff with U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration has increased a bounty for his arrest or capture.
The Trump Administration has doubled the bounty for the capture of Maduro to $50 million.
Trump has deployed warships off the Venezuelan shores which sunk a reported drug trafficking boat being operated by a gang which the administration alleges is controlled by Maduro.
On Sunday, Maduro said he was more than doubling the deployment of troops to secure Venezuela’s long Caribbean coastline and its border with Colombia.
“These 25,000 brave men and women of our glorious armed forces are deployed to defend our homeland, secure our borders, and preserve the peace that our people deserve,” Maduro said.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visited the USS Iwo Jima on Monday — one of eight U.S. Navy ships now involved in counter-narcotics efforts in Latin America — according to a social media post on a Pentagon account.
The post, captioned “A message to our warfighters from the Secretary of War,” included a video that showed Hegseth addressing military personnel on the ship, edited with other images of him observing operations on the vessel, telling the troops they were working to “end the poisoning of the American people” with drugs.
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