President Donald Trump says the United States will “run” Venezuela after a military operation captured Nicolas Maduro and his wife, shocking the world with an overnight attack that marked the culmination of a months-long pressure campaign against the nation’s leader.
The U.S. president said an interim “group” with top administration officials will “run” the country for “a period of time” until the United States determines a “peaceful and just transition” can take place.
That group appears to include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, CIA director John Ratcliffe, and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trump did not rule out the possibility of American “boots on the ground,” though he suggested U.S. military assets will be present “as it pertains to oil.”
But the president said little about how his administration would “run” the South American nation, which has the largest oil reserves in the world. He said only that the operation “won’t cost us anything” because American oil companies would enter the country to rebuild its oil and gas infrastructure.
“The oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust, for a long period of time,” Trump said. “We’re going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken oil infrastructure, and start making money.”
He claimed Venezuela “stole our oil” after the country nationalized its oil industry.
Pressed on how the seizure of Venezuelan oil aligns with his “America first” agenda, Trump told a reporter that “we want to surround ourselves with good neighbors.”
“We need that for ourselves, we need that for the world,” he said. “We're in the oil business...We’ll be selling large amounts of oil to other countries.”
What happens next after a series of escalating attacks and threats of regime change hinges on the responses from Venezuelan officials, regional governments and armed forces in an increasingly volatile situation amid the possibility of further American intervention.
The Trump administration’s apparent attempt to seize Venezuela’s oil reserves “is not a legitimate basis for toppling a government,” according to Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Service Committee.
“It violates international law and has failed catastrophically in the past,” he said. “Pursuing regime change without the consent of the American people is a reckless overreach and an abuse of power.”
Chevron, among the leading private oil companies operating in Venezuela, where it has maintained several projects for more than a century, said in a statement Saturday that it supports a “peaceful, lawful transition that promotes stability and economic recovery.”
The company is offering its “experience and presence to strengthen U.S. energy security.”
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was sworn in as interim president and could hold elections within 30 days, under Venezuela’s constitution.
She denied the Trump administration’s claims that she plans to help the U.S. government run the country, despite Trump saying she is “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolas Maduro Moros,” Rodriguez said in remarks Saturday.
She said Venezuela’s government is open to resuming a relationship with the Trump administration, but only within the framework of international and Venezuelan law.
“That is the only type of relationship I will accept, after they have attacked and militarily assaulted our beloved nation,” she said.
Venezuela declared a state of emergency after the attacks in the capital of Caracas and in the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira.
The nation “rejects, repudiates and denounces” U.S. military aggression, according to the communications ministry, which called on “all social and political forces in the country to activate mobilization plans and repudiate this imperialist attack.”
Maduro’s capture follows Trump’s months-long military campaign against his regime, including a lethal series of attacks on boats off Venezuela’s coast, a massive build up of naval vessels in the region, and armed forces seizing Venezuelan oil tankers.
Officials have offered varying justifications for attacks that have killed more than 100 people over the last five months while suggesting regime change was imminent. The Trump administration claims the boats are trafficking illicit drugs into the United States, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said in a recent interview that the campaign is designed to get Maduro to “cry uncle.”
But those strikes “failed to break Maduro’s inner circle, and Washington has now shifted from operations at sea to direct action on Venezuelan territory,” according to Tiziano Breda, senior analyst for Latin America at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), a conflict monitoring and research group.
Venezuela has so far avoided direct confrontation with U.S forces, “but deployments on the streets point to efforts to contain unrest,” Breda said Saturday.
Interior minister Diosdado Cabello, among the most powerful figures in the country after Maduro, is similarly targeted by the Department of Justice and could face fierce resistance from U.S. forces.
Exiled opposition figure Edmundo Gonzalez was recognized by Joe Biden’s administration as the “true winner” of the 2024 presidential election in which Maduro declared victory. And Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has supported the Trump campaign against Maduro, won a 2023 opposition primary to face Maduro, whose administration subsequently barred her from running.
Trump did not mention either of them as potential successors in his remarks Saturday. He said Machado “doesn’t have the support inside the country or the respect.”
“A smooth transition remains unlikely, and the risk of resistance from pro-regime armed groups — including elements within the military and Colombian rebel networks active in the country — remains high,” Breda added.
The attacks “create a worrisome precedent for the region,” according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a long-running human rights research and advocacy organization, which warned that the Trump administration’s “gunboat diplomacy” and “disregard for international law” not only damages U.S. standing but escalates tensions in an already-boiling environment.
“It is essential that efforts from Venezuelans and the international community now focus on de-escalating tensions, protecting civilians, and producing a peaceful and democratic transition,” the group said Saturday.
Starmer says UK sheds ‘no tears’ at the end of Maduro regime in Venezuela
Live updates: Trump says US will run country for now
PM backs transition in Venezuela after Trump says US will ‘run’ country
Why a solution to deadly bleeding in childbirth isn’t reaching mothers
Republicans praise Trump’s strike and takeover of Venezuela despite no authorization
Trump posts photo of handcuffed Maduro after Venezuelan president’s capture
