Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro criticized Argentine President Javier Milei for the removal of the Venezuelan channel Telesur from the public television lineup, during the broadcast of his program Con Maduro +. He also called him "malnacido" (scoundrel) and "vende patria" (traitor).
On Friday, the Argentine government announced that it had notified Telesur that it would cease broadcasting on the state-owned Televisión Digital Abierta (TDA) platform as of July 1.
Telesur is a multi-state regional channel, controlled by Venezuela, where its headquarters are located, and it also includes Nicaragua and Cuba as partners.
This is not the first time that the Argentine government has decided to remove the Telesur channel from the federal signal lineup. In 2016, former President Mauricio Macri also deleted Telesur from the TDA and transferred the 14% share package that Argentina had in the channel at the time.
However, the next Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, who would leave office in December 2023, restored Telesur to the TDA in 2020, even though the Argentine government no longer owned any shares.
During his program "Con Maduro +," the Venezuelan head of state said that the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, "is afraid of teleSUR" and, therefore, attempts to "censor it."
#ENVIVO| Presidente de Venezuela, @NicolasMaduro: @JMilei no vas a poder censurar a @teleSURtv, porque tienes miedo a la verdad de los pueblos
— teleSUR TV (@teleSURtv) May 7, 2024
➡https://t.co/tqMKHfl0b4 pic.twitter.com/2EQSaofi8N
"Milei is afraid. Milei is afraid of Telesur," Maduro said. "You won't be able to censor it, Milei. You are afraid of the truth of the people," he added.
The president also referred to the interview that the libertarian gave to the British network BBC, in which he assured that he would not renounce the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, nor would he seek a conflict with the United Kingdom.
"It's not an instant solution, but one that will take time. We seek to engage in dialogue so that at some point the Falkland Islands return to Argentina," Milei had said.
"The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, says that he accepts that the Falkland Islands are currently in the hands of the United Kingdom," journalist María Antonieta Peña said on Maduro's program before asking for his opinion on these statements.
"This is what the oligarchies want," Maduro said. "They wanted to put a puppet president in Venezuela to hand over the Guayana Esequiba. Imperialism put a puppet in Argentina and is giving away the Falklands."
"What more do you need to know that the projects like Milei in Argentina, like Bolsonaro in Brazil, which they want to apply in Venezuela, are to take away our wealth, our territory, our sovereignty and turn us into a colony, which is why he asserts that the Falklands belong to Britain," he added.
Furthermore, he labeled him a "traitor" and a "scoundrel" and expressed his wish for "the spirits of San Martín, Juan Domingo Perón, Evita, Diego Armando Maradona" to haunt him at night, depriving him of sleep.
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