Trump offered almost no details on how the US would “run” a sovereign nation when its vice president, legislature and military were still in place and publicly opposing the US move. He said it would include deploying US oil companies to the country, though he indicated that his embargo “on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect” and that US forces would stay on alert.
President Donald Trump said the US would run Venezuela until a leadership transition could be organised, hours after a US operation captured leader Nicolás Maduro, ousting the strongman from power and delivering him to US soil late Saturday.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”
