Trump admin short on details after asserting it will 'run' Venezuela

First Maduro, then Venezuela: After the surprise arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, involving several branches of US armed forces, President Donald Trump announced Washington will take charge of the South American country in the interim.

“We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said in a news conference from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday.

“We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.”

Trump added that the US would run Venezuela “with a group” and would be “designating various people” in charge — pointing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, behind him.

That said, Trump remained short on details despite repeated questions from reporters.

At one point, he claimed Venezuela’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez “was just sworn in” as Maduro’s successor and said she was "willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again."

Yet, the Venezuelan government has not announced that Rodríguez was sworn in.

Trump's announcement marks a massive escalation of US intervention after months of speculation about whether Washington would actually invade the country - and what the US administration's plans for the transition would look like. “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Trump said.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” he added.

“And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack, if we need to do so.”

At the same press conference, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected the notion that the operation in Venezuela required Congressional approval.

Instead, Rubio described it as a law enforcement operation supported by the US armed forces for which Congressional input was not necessary.

The strike “was not the kind of mission that you can do Congressional notification on,” Rubio said.

“Nicolás Maduro was indicted in 2020 in the United States. He is not the legitimate president of Venezuela,” Rubio continued.

“He is a fugitive of the American justice with a $50 million reward. I guess we’re saving $50 million now,” he added.

Chiming in, Trump suggested that the administration did not tell Congress because plans of the strike could have leaked.

The political opposition in Washington was quick to criticise Trump’s moves in Venezuela without absolving Maduro.

“If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership? What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president?,” said Democratic Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in a statement.

“Once this line is crossed, the rules that restrain global chaos begin to collapse, and authoritarian regimes will be the first to exploit it,” he added.

“The hypocrisy underlying this decision is especially glaring,” Warner continued, comparing the Venezuela operation with Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a US court on serious drug trafficking charges

“Yet now, the administration claims that similar allegations justify the use of military force against another sovereign nation. You cannot credibly argue that drug trafficking charges demand invasion in one case, while issuing a pardon in another.”

Support for Trump came from the Republican Party in Congress. Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a short statement in which he commended Trump “for ordering a successful mission” to arrest Maduro and bring him to justice in the United States.

“This arrest was the culmination of a monthslong effort by the Trump administration to degrade the narco-terrorist organizations that Maduro oversaw,” Wicker added.

“The Venezuelan people must now act swiftly to put their country back on a path to peace and prosperity, which will redound to the benefit of all their neighbors,” Wicker said.

The operation in Venezuela could usher in a period of immense change in the country, said Daniel DePetris, a fellow at the think tank Defense Priorities in an emailed statement. “Whether that change will be positive or negative in the long-term remains to be seen,” he added.

“A split in the Venezuelan military, an expansion of criminal groups in the country, civil war, and the emergence of an even worse autocrat are all possible scenarios. None of these would bode well for regional stability or US interests in its sphere of influence,” DePetris said.

The Trump administration’s rationale for pressuring Maduro has shifted repeatedly over the last several months.

The justification ranged from countering drug trafficking and reclaiming oil resources that Venezuela purportedly stole from the US to deposing an authoritarian government in the name of democracy.

In each case, Venezuela has been described as a direct threat to US security in the Western Hemisphere.

“But this is giving the Maduro regime too much credit. In reality, Venezuela is a bankrupt state whose economy has declined precipitously over the last decade,” DePetris said.