Pat Robertson Calls For âHellfire Missileâ Strike On Venezuelaâs Nicolas Maduro
The 89-year-old right-wing Christian televangelist Pat Robertson has called on the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicoals Maduro with a drone strike.
As Donald Trump has escalated his rhetoric condemning Venezuelaâs President Nicolas Maduro, as well as calming economic sanctions on the country and recognizing Maduroâs opposition leader Juan GuaidĂł as the countryâs president, as NBC News reported, a top right-wing American Christian evangelical leader called on the United States to assassinate Maduro with a drone strike.
Eighty-nine-year-old Pat Robertson, the longtime chairman and top on-air personality on the Christian Broadcasting Network, took to the CBN airwaves on Thursday to issue the call for Maduroâs killing, using U.S. military technology, as posted on Twitter.
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âItâs time for action,â Robertson said, calling on the Organization of American States â the regional body consisting of 35 North, South, and Central American countries â to stage an assassination of the 56-year-old Maduro, who has ruled Venezuela since 2013.
âIt may be it needs the Americans to lead it, but I could see, we have very effective drones,â Robertson said.
âWe have what are called Hellfire Missiles, they could be fired from drones. And I believe itâs time to give Mr. Maduro a little taste of what heâs been doing to the opposition.â
But Robertsonâs call to kill Maduro by a âHellfire Missileâ drone strike was not the first time that the televangelist, who ran for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination, had implored the U.S. to assassinate a Venezuelan leader, according to The New York Times.
In 2005, Roberston also suggested that the United States assassinate Maduroâs predecessor as Venezuelaâs president, Hugo Chavez, saying, âIf he thinks weâre trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. Itâs a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.â
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In fact, Maduro did survive an assassination attempt last year, which was carried out by drones, according to CNN. But the would-be assassins did not use military drones capable of firing Hellfire Missiles. Instead, the attack was carried out by âretailâ drones which were âpurchased onlineâ and loaded with explosives, according to the CNN report.
Though Maduro blamed the assassination-by-drone attempt on âterroristsâ working in concert with the governments of Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, according to Reuters, the CNN report noted that an organizer of the attack gave an interview to the network, in which he said that the assassination attempt was carried out by defectors from Venezuelaâs military that held meetings with US officials.
Opposition leader GuaidĂł, however, said -at the time- that he suspected that the Maduro government had staged the attack itself, in order to make Maduro and his supporters âlook like victims,â according to CNN.
