US President Donald Trump has critics all over latest being Venezuela’s embattled President Nicolás Maduro who has called Donald Trump’s government a “gang of extremists” and blamed the US for his country’s crisis.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Maduro said he would not allow humanitarian aid into Venezuela as it was a way for the US to justify an intervention.
“They are warmongering in order to take over Venezuela,” he said.
The US and most Western governments have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as interim president.
Mr Maduro is under growing internal and international pressure to call early presidential elections amid a worsening economic crisis and accusations of widespread corruption and human rights violations amid allegations that the opposition leader calls for demonstrations.
Relations between the US and Venezuela were already fraught before President Trump backed Mr Guaidó as leader. Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations in response while Mr Trump said the use of military force remained “an option”.
The Trump administration was one of the first to support Mr Guaidó as interim president and declared Mr Maduro’s re-election last year “illegitimate”.
In a rare interview, Mr Maduro said he hoped “this extremist group in the White House is defeated by powerful world-wide public opinion”.
Speaking in the capital Caracas, he told the BBC’s Orla Guerin: “It’s a political war, of the United States empire, of the interests of the extreme right that today is governing, of the Ku Klux Klan, that rules the White House, to take over Venezuela.”
The US has also imposed a raft of economic measures on Venezuela, including against the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, aiming to hit the country’s main source of revenue.
It has criticised Mr Maduro’s increased use of the courts and security forces to suppress political opposition.
The president has rejected allowing foreign humanitarian aid into the country, a move that is being organised by the opposition. He said Venezuela had “the capacity to satisfy all the needs of its people” and did not have to “beg from anyone”.
But for years Venezuelans have faced severe shortages of basic items such as medicine and food. Last year, the inflation rate saw prices doubling every 19 days on average.
Mr Maduro, who has blamed US sanctions for Venezuela’s economic woes, said the US intended to “create a humanitarian crisis in order to justify a military intervention”.
“This is part of that charade. That’s why, with all dignity, we tell them we don’t want their crumbs, their toxic food, their left-overs.”
Mr Maduro, who took office in 2013, was re-elected to a second term last year but the elections were controversial with many opposition candidates barred from running or jailed, and claims of vote-rigging.
Head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, Mr Guaidó declared himself president on 23 January, saying the constitution allowed him to assume power temporarily when the president was deemed illegitimate.
Mr Maduro – who still has the support of Russia and China and, crucially, of the Venezuelan army – said he did not see the need for early presidential elections.
“What’s the logic, reasoning, to repeat an election?” he asked.