The Trump administration is considering giving White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller a bigger role in overseeing policy in Venezuela after the capture of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro, according to a new report.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has spearheaded hawkish initiatives regarding the South American country, is involved on the program but his several roles in the administration will likely complicate chances of him being running day-to-day operations, The Washington Post noted.
The outlet added that Miller also took a leading role in the effort to remove Maduro from power, something that was illustrated by the fact that he was one of the officials flanking Trump in his press conference following the capture operation on Saturday.
It is unclear what lies ahead for the South American country. President Donald Trump said his administration will "run" Venezuela, leading to broad speculation about what the statement meant.
Rubio elaborated on the matter on Sunday, saying there is no plan for the occupation of Venezuela, but noted that Trump "always retains optionality on anything and on all of these matters."
"He certainly has the ability and the right under the Constitution of the United States to act against imminent and urgent threats against the country," Rubio added.
In another passage of the interview, he claimed that Trump "does not feel like he is going to publicly, you know, rule out options that are available for the United States," and what is actually happening is an "oil quarantine that allows us to exert tremendous leverage over what happens next."
"We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking, so that we no longer have these gang problems, so that they kick the FARC and the ELN out, and that they no longer cozy up to Hezbollah and Iran in our own hemisphere," Rubio added.
Asked about whether there will be elections in the country soon, Rubio called the idea "absurd," saying that "these things take time."
"Of course we want to see Venezuela transition to be a place completely different than what it looks like today. But obviously we don't have the expectation that's going to 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," Rubio claimed.
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