Top Venezuelan Regime Figure Taunts Those Who 'Don't Want Us To Celebrate Christmas': 'You'll Crash Against Structural Joy'

Top Venezuelan regime figure Diosdado Cabello seemed to taunt the Trump administration and the country's opposition, saying "there are some who don't want us to celebrate Christmas."

"There are people who take pleasure and joy in others not being calm. That is sick. There are those who enjoy that our people, for example, not celebrate Christmas. You'll crash against the structural joy of our people. We'll celebrate here," Cabello said.

The comments come as opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado said that Venezuela is living through "decisive hours" as the U.S. continues building up military forces in the region and conducting strikes against alleged drug boats.

Her remarks coincided with the arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to Caribbean waters and the start of new military maneuvers by the Maduro regime.

Machado said she was confident in the strength of the civic movement that backs her. "A united people, like no Venezuelan generation before, is the guarantee of an orderly, peaceful, irreversible transition," she said.

She described the country as being "on the threshold of freedom and an unprecedented transformation," pledging that her government would take control of national institutions "from the first day" to address the humanitarian crisis, ensure transparency in public finances, and begin social and economic reforms.

"From the first day, we will assume control of institutions and the territory, respond to the humanitarian emergency, restore order, transparency, and begin the deep transformations that will make this change irreversible," Machado added.

Her appeal came as authoritarian President Maduro ordered the mobilization of more than 200,000 troops, including units from the Bolivarian Militia, in response to what Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López called "imperial threats." The regime's new National Defense Command Law, approved this week, authorizes increased surveillance and crisis coordination.

Elsewhere, a Washington Post report noted that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel said in a classified opinion that troops taking part in the military operation in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific won't be exposed to prosecution for their actions.

The outlet added that the decision to pursue such an opinion illustrates concerns within the administration about the legality of the actions, which have so far killed 76 people across 19 different strikes.

Several officers advised caution on the matter, according to the Post. They included Admiral Alvin Holsey, the head of the Southern Command, who has since announced he will step down from his post at the end of the year, one year into a typically three-year assignment.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told the outlet that "current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law" and that all actions are in "complete compliance with the law of armed conflict."