The Trump administration will leave the mundane matters of running Venezuela to its remaining leaders, a senior official said, as White House officials begin to espouse more hawkish goals for American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.
In the immediate hours and days following a bold U.S. military and law enforcement operation in Caracas to arrest Nicolás Maduro and remove him from power, President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other administration officials offered conflicting views of who was running Venezuela.
Trump twice assured reporters he and his team were calling the shots, with Maduro in a Brooklyn detention facility. “It means we’re in charge,” the president told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday evening when asked to clarify who was running things in the Venezuelan capital.
