US President Donald Trump on Monday revealed that there was an opportunity to make a deal with any official in Venezuela to ‘remove’ Nicolas Maduro and said that his team decided to do it without the help of the Venezuelan leader’s ‘inner circle’.
While asserting that a set of people, including secretary of state Marco Rubio and vice president JD Vance, would help oversee Washington’s involvement in Venezuela, Trump said that he is in charge of the Latin American nation. Follow live updates on US-Venezuela tensions
“It’s a group of all. They have expertise, different expertise,” Trump told NBC News while identifying the US officials’ group as Marco Rubio, defence secretary Pete Hegseth, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller and JD Vance.
But for the question of who is ultimately in charge of Venezuela, Trump simply said, “Me”.
The US President’s remarks come just two days after the American forces carried out a military operation in Caracas and captured Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife.
Maduro was taken out of the country and brought to the US, where he will be facing trial for the charges he has been indicted for. The 63-year-old has been charged with four criminal counts, including narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine into the US, and possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Maduro pled not guilty before a New York federal court on Monday.
In Maduro’s absence, his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, has taken charge as the interim president of Venezuela.
In connection with any new elections in Venezuela after Maduro’s capture, Trump told NBC News that the country will first have to be fixed. “You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote.” He further stated that it is going to take a significant amount of time before the Latin American country votes. “We have to nurse the country back to health,” Trump added.
Meanwhile, Trump’s White House chief of staff Stephen Miller said that the President has asked Marco Rubio to lead the process to implement economic and political reforms in Venezuela.
Trump requested Rubio “under the president’s close guidance and direction, to be the lead on this process,” Miller told reporters, adding that the state secretary will lead a team of officials, including those working on energy, financial, and military policy.
“It’s a big team, a group of people — everybody’s working great and closely together,” Miller said.
He also added that the US believes it is getting “full, complete and total” cooperation from the interim government in Caracas after Maduro’s capture, Bloomberg reported.
“We are very much getting full, complete and total cooperation from the government of Venezuela, and as a result of that cooperation, the people of Venezuela are going to become richer than they ever have before, and of course, the United States is going to benefit from this massively in terms of economic security and military cooperation,” Miller said.
However, on his part, Marco Rubio has largely sidestepped these questions by indicating that Washington would exert influence on the remaining Venezuelan government through economic coercion and the threat of more military action.
On Sunday, Rubio sought to dial back Trump’s remarks on “running” Venezuela, suggesting that the US would not take a day-to-day role in governing Caracas.
The state secretary said that Washington would give time to the current leadership in Venezuela to act, saying, “We’re going to judge everything by what they do, and we’re going to see what they do.” He did not rule out a US military presence in the country, and said that the existing US “force posture” was sufficient to intercept drug boats and sanctioned oil shipments.
Additionally, in his NBC News interview, Trump also clarified that the US is “not” at war with Venezuela. He said that it is at war with those who “sell drugs, empty their prisons into our country and empty their drug addicts and mental institutions into our country”.
However, Trump made it clear that Washington could launch a second military operation into Venezuela if Delcy Rodriguez stops cooperating with American officials, adding that he believes this will not be necessary.
The US President said that Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize win has “nothing to do” with his decision on who will run Caracas.
