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Watch Donald Trump Struggle To Pronounce The Word ‘Venezuela’ Three Times In His Venezuela Speech Monday

By Jonathan Vankin
Published on: 12:49 PST, Feb 18, 2019

Donald Trump delivered a speech on Monday calling for Venezuela’s military to abandon the country’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, condemning Maduro as a “Cuban puppet” before an enthusiastic crowd in Miami, home to the United States largest community of Venezuelan-Americans and Venezuelan immigrants, according to The Guardian. In the speech, Trump hinted at the possibility of U.S. military action against Venezuela, and praised the country’s political opposition leader Juan Guaidó who last month declared himself “interim president” and has been recognized by the United States.

But during the same speech, Trump appeared on at least three occasions to struggle with and slur the pronunciation of the word “Venezuela,” at one point enunciating the name of the country as “Venenwella,” as seen in the video below on the page, compiled by Vox reporter Aaron Rupar and posted on his Twitter account.

He seemed also to struggle with the word when recounting the story of Oscar Pérez, the Venezuelan rebel leader who on June 27 of 2017 stole a helicopter from the national police agency, and used it to drop grenades on government buildings. Perez then went into hiding for seven months after Maduro’s government labeled him a “terrorist,” until he was gunned down by police after a nine-hour siege in January of last year, according to a BBC account.

In the speech at Florida International University on Monday, Trump brought Pérez’s mother on stage, saying that her son “will not have died in vain,” according to a New York Times report.

Trump also warned members of Venezuela’s military that they would be “risking their future, risking their lives and Venezuela’s future for a man controlled by the Cuban military and protected by a private army of Cuban soldiers,” if they continued to support Maduro over Guaidó, according to the Washington, D.C., news site The Hill.

And Trump also implied that military action by the United States remained a possibility, according to CNN, saying, “We seek a peaceful transition of power, but all options are open.”

But Twitter users who responded to Rupar’s video were as fascinated by Trump’s difficulty in pronouncing “Venezuela” as by his warnings of possible military actions, with one even speculating that Trump was using the drug Adderall, as was claimed by a former Apprentice staff member, the Inquisitr earlier noted.

Maduro himself quickly responded to Trump’s speech, though without making note of Trump’s apparent difficulty saying the name of the country against which he was possibly threatening war, instead slamming Trump’s speech as “almost Nazi-like,” as quoted by the Washington Times.

“Who is the commander of the armed forces, Donald Trump from Miami?” Maduro said in his response. “They think they’re the owners of the country.”

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