President Donald Trump said Venezuela won't have elections in the next 30 days and the country must be "nursed back to health" before they can take place.
Speaking to NBC News, Trump added that the U.S. has to "fix the country first." "You can't have an election. There's no way the people could even vote," he added.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a similar claim following the capture of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro, saying the notion of holding elections immediately is "absurd."
"These things take time, there's a process," Rubio added. He went on to say that "of course we want to see Venezuela transition to be a place completely different than what it looks like today," but the expectation can't be that it will "happen in the next 15 hours."
"What we do have an expectation is that it move in that direction. We think it's in our national interest, and frankly, in the interest of people of Venezuela," he claimed.
Rubio will be among the official in charge of overseeing the administration's involvement in Venezuela. It also includes deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller and Vice President JD Vance. "It's a group of all. They have all expertise, different expertise." However, Trump added, he will be ultimately in charge.
In another passage of the interview, Trump said that his administration could subsidized efforts by oil companies to rebuild the country's energy infrastructure, which could take less than a year and a half.
"A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they'll get reimbursed by us or through revenue," he added.
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