Venezuelan president's YouTube account offline as tensions with US escalate

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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The YouTube account of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was offline Saturday, with Venezuelan state-run channel Telesur claiming in a message on X that it was “eliminated” late the previous night without justification.

YouTube’s parent company Google did not immediately respond to questions on the apparent termination of the Venezuelan president’s account. It comes amid rising tensions between Venezuela and the United States over the deployment of American warships and fighter jets in the southern Caribbean.

Maduro’s YouTube account had more than 200,000 followers before it became unavailable Friday and was used to publish the Venezuelan president’s speeches, as well as clips from his weekly show on Venezuelan state TV.

On its website, YouTube says it eliminates accounts that commit “repeated violations of community guidelines” that include publishing misinformation, hate speech and content that “interferes with democratic processes.”

Maduro has been widely accused of stealing last year’s presidential election in Venezuela, which he lost by a landslide according to tally sheets gathered by hundreds of Venezuelan opposition activists. Venezuela’s elections agency, which is controlled by the ruling socialist party, never published tally sheets to support its claim that Maduro won the vote.

In 2020, Maduro was indicted by a federal court in New York where he has been charged with conspiring to traffic cocaine to the United States. Recently, the U.S. doubled a bounty payment for Maduro’s capture to $50 million, with White House officials often referring to Maduro as a drug cartel leader who must be brought to justice.

While Venezuela continues to sell oil to the United States and take deportation flights, relations between the two nations have worsened with the deployment of eight U.S. warships last month to an area of the southern Caribbean near Venezuela’s coast.

The Trump administration says the ships, which are fitted with long-range missiles and are also transporting a landing force of 2,000 Marines, are on an anti-drug trafficking mission.

But Venezuela’s government has described the deployment as an attack on the nation’s sovereignty and part of an effort to overthrow Maduro’s government.

The U.S. flotilla has destroyed three speedboats allegedly carrying drugs so far, according to the White House, killing more than a dozen people on board the small vessels.