Trump says U.S. will ‘run’ Venezuela, seeks oil companies’ investments
President Trump said the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until there can be a proper transition to a new government after American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition to new leadership,” Mr. Trump said during Saturday’s press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Florida just hours after the high-stakes mission.
Mr. Trump emphasized that the U.S. doesn’t want a new leader to take over during the vacuum created by Mr. Maduro’s removal, which could result in “the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”
The president said the transition “has to be judicious because that’s what we are all about. We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good people of Venezuela in mind.”
Mr. Trump did not provide any specifics about how the U.S. would “run” Venezuela, but said it could involve the military.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he said. “We don’t mind saying it, but we’re going to make sure that the country is run properly. We are not doing this in vain.”
He also said that some of the officials standing behind him at the press conference, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, could be involved in the transition, although he did not define their roles.
Mr. Trump also said American oil companies were prepared to make major investments in Venezuela.
“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 said.
By involving the U.S. oil companies, Mr. Trump said it would not cost U.S. taxpayers any money to manage Venezuela. The country holds the world’s largest oil reserves, estimated at 303 billion barrels, significantly more than Saudi Arabia.
Still, production is low due to mismanagement, lack of investment and U.S. sanctions, making production and output expensive and difficult.
“We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela, and it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s remarks came after he announced early Saturday that the U.S. conducted strikes on Venezuela and captured Mr. Maduro and his wife.
On Truth Social, Mr. Trump shared a picture of Mr. Maduro, blindfolded and wearing a sweatsuit, in custody aboard the U.S. assault ship Iwo Jima.
Mr. Maduro and Ms. Flores are headed to New York, where they’ve been indicted on drug and gun charges.
In a post on X, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Venezuelan leader would “face the full wrath” of the U.S. justice system.
The U.S. action was the culmination of months of increased pressure from Mr. Trump and his administration to remove the Venezuelan leader. It was carried out without congressional approval, which drew pushback from some Democrats on the Hill.
“We called members of Congress immediately after. This was not the kind of mission that you can do congressional notification on,” Mr. Rubio said. “It was a trigger-based mission in which conditions had to be met night after night. We watched and monitored that for a number of days. So it’s just simply not the kind of mission you can call people and say, ‘We may do this at some point in the next 15 days.’”
Mr. Rubio also said that because it was a law enforcement matter, the administration didn’t have to notify Congress beforehand.
“At its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice,” he said. “There are broader policy implications here, but it’s just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify, because it endangers the mission.”
Mr. Trump added that he wanted to avoid leaks.
“This would not be good if they leaked,” he said. “I think it would have been maybe a very different result. But I have to say they knew we were coming at some point. You know a lot of ships were out there. They knew we were coming, but Congress will leak and we don’t want leakers.”
The president said the U.S. military was prepared to strike Venezuela again if the first one didn’t succeed.
“We are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we needed to do so,” he said.
He added that no American casualties occurred during the operation.
“Not a single American service member was killed and not a single piece of American equipment was lost,” he said. “We had many helicopters, many planes, many, many people involved in that fight, but think of that. Not one piece of military equipment was lost. Not one service member was — more importantly — killed.”
The president said the lights in Caracas were shut off Saturday as the military moved in to capture Mr. Maduro.
“No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved yesterday or frankly in just a short period of time. All Venezuelan military capacities were rendered powerless as the men and women of our military, working with us, law enforcement, successfully captured Maduro in the dead of night,” Mr. Trump said.
“It was dark, the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have.”
Following Mr. Trump’s remarks, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine confirmed that military forces waited over a week for the weather to clear up.
“Weather in Venezuela is always a factor this time of the year, and over the weeks through Christmas and New Year’s, the men and women of the United States military sat ready, patiently waiting for the right triggers to be met and the president to order us into action,” the Air Force general told reporters.
“Last night, the weather broke just enough, clearing a path that only the most skilled aviators in the world could maneuver through.”
Gen. Caine said Trump gave the order to go at 10:46 p.m. Eastern time Friday, and troops — including Delta Force soldiers — arrived at Maduro’s compound by 1:01 a.m. Saturday.
By 3:29 a.m., Gen. Caine said, the soldiers were back over water with Mr. Maduro and Ms. Flores.
The U.S., in recent months, increased its pressure on Maduro in an effort to force him from power.
Last month, the U.S seized two oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela and the U.S. military continued its strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea. The Treasury Department also slapped sanctions on Mr. Maduro and his family.
