The United States attacked Venezuela and captured its long-serving President Nicolas Maduro in an overnight operation on Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump said, promising to put the country under American control for now, including by deploying U.S. forces if necessary.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “We can’t take a chance that someone else takes over Venezuela who doesn’t have the interests of Venezuelans in mind.”
It is unclear how Trump plans to oversee Venezuela. Despite a dramatic overnight operation that knocked out electricity in part of Caracas and captured Maduro in or near one of his safe houses, U.S. forces have no control over the country itself, and Maduro’s government appears to still be in charge.
Trump’s comments about an open-ended presence in Venezuela echoed past leadership changes in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which ended in U.S. withdrawals after years of occupation. He said he was open to the idea of sending U.S. forces into Venezuela.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he said.
Trump did not provide specific answers to repeated questions from reporters about how the U.S. would run Venezuela.
A U.S. occupation “won’t cost us a penny” because the United States would be reimbursed from the “money coming out of the ground,” Trump said, referring to Venezuela’s oil reserves, a subject he returned to repeatedly during Saturday’s press conference.
Trump said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been in touch with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez — Maduro’s presumptive successor.
“‘We’ll do whatever you need,'” Trump quoted Rodriguez as saying. “She really doesn’t have a choice.”
Who is Delcy Rodriguez?
Following are some facts about Delcy Rodriguez, whom U.S. President Donald Trump said during a press conference on Saturday was “just sworn in” as president of Venezuela after Nicolas Maduro was captured by U.S. forces.
The Venezuelan government has not announced that Rodriguez was sworn in and several sources told Reuters she was in Russia, though the Russian state news agency denied the report.
Trump said that the U.S. would be running Venezuela in the immediate future and that Rodriguez has said she is “willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
- Maduro has called Rodriguez a “tiger” for her diehard defense of his socialist government.
- She works closely with her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, who is the head of the national assembly legislature.
- Caracas native Rodriguez, 56, was born on May 18, 1969 and is the daughter of left-wing guerrilla fighter Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, who founded the revolutionary Liga Socialista party in the 1970s.
- Rodriguez’s roles as finance and oil minister, held simultaneously with her vice-presidential post, have made her a key figure in the management of Venezuela’s economy and gained her major influence with the country’s withered private sector. She has applied orthodox economic policies in a bid to fight exaggerated inflation.
- She called on the U.S. government to provide proof of life for Maduro and his wife in an audio message played on state television on Saturday, but her exact whereabouts are not known.
- She is an attorney who graduated from Universidad Central de Venezuela and rose rapidly through the political ranks in the last decade, serving as Communication and Information Minister between 2013 and 2014.
- Rodriguez, known as a lover of designer fashions, was foreign minister from 2014 to 2017, during which time she attempted to crash a Mercosur trade bloc meeting in Buenos Aires, following Venezuela’s suspension from the group.
- She began serving as the head of a pro-government Constituent Assembly, which expanded Maduro’s powers, in 2017.
- Rodriguez was named vice president in June 2018, with Maduro announcing the appointment on X by describing her as “a young woman, brave, seasoned, daughter of a martyr, revolutionary and tested in a thousand battles.”
- In August 2024, Maduro added the oil ministry to Rodriguez’s portfolio, where she has been tasked with managing escalating U.S. sanctions on the country’s most important industry.
