Trump Governance Details Plan to “Run” Venezuela After Maduro’s Capture

WASHINGTON – Top officials in the Trump administration clarified their position on “running” Venezuela after seizing its president, Nicolás Maduro, over the weekend, pressuring the government that remains in power there Sunday to acquiesce to U.S. demands on oil access and drug enforcement, or else face further military action.

Their goal appears to be the establishment of a pliant vassal state in Caracas that keeps the current government – led by Maduro for more than a decade – largely in place, but finally defers to the whims of Washington after turning away from the United States for a quarter-century.

It leaves little room for the ascendance of Venezuela’s democratic opposition, which won the country’s last national election according to the State Department, European capitals and international monitoring bodies.

President Trump and his top aides said they would try to work with Maduro’s handpicked vice president and current interim president, delcy Rodríguez, to run the country and its oil sector “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” offering no time frame for proposed elections.

Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem underscored the strategy in a series of interviews Sunday morning.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told the Atlantic magazine, referring to Rodríguez. “Rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.”

Rubio said that a U.S. naval quarantine of Venezuelan oil tankers would continue unless and until Rodríguez begins cooperating with the U.S. administration, referring to the blockade – and the lingering threat of additional military action from the fleet off Venezuela’s coast – as “leverage” over the remnants of Maduro’s government.

“That’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that,” Rubio told CBS News. “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.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.),chairman of the Senate Select Committee on intelligence,told CNN that he had been in touch with the administration as the Saturday night operation that snatched maduro and his wife from their bedroom,whisking them away to New York to face criminal charges.

Trump’s vow to “run” the country, Cotton said, “means the new leaders of Venezuela need to meet our demands.”

“Delcy Rodríguez,and the other ministers in venezuela,understand now what the U.S. military is capable of,” cotton said, adding: “It is a fact that she and other indicted and sanctioned individuals are in Venezuela. They have control.