The United States has already announced that it has a: “stabilization”, “recovery” and “transition” plans. In the background, from minute one, are the , who motivate everything. Since President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, lawyer Cilia Flores, were captured in Caracas last weekend, clues have been given about projects, bets and pacts, but not about times. Until today.
According to the newspaper the North American president, has announced in an interview with his reporters that he expects his Administration to govern Venezuela and extract oil from its enormous reserves for years, not weeks or months. The Republican has confessed that the country’s interim government, formed by former loyalists to the now imprisoned Maduro and headed by his former number two, is “giving everything we consider necessary.”
“Only time will tell,” he said when asked how long he will require direct supervision of the Caribbean nation, given the imminent threat of US military action from a navy near the coast, which the magnate does not stop dropping, despite being denied, for now, by his Foreign Minister. To the direct question of whether his conservatorship could last three months, six months, a year or more, Trump answers: “I would say much longer.” “We will rebuild it in a very profitable way,” declared the president, speaking of the attacked country.
This internal transition, with minimal criticism of the CIA assault and maintenance, even suggests that Rodríguez and other senior official officials knew what was going to happen and agreed with the White House on the time to come.
During a nearly two-hour interview, Trump made clear his plans for the immediate future. “We are going to use oil and we are going to receive it. We are lowering oil prices and we are going to give money to Venezuela, which desperately needs it,” he maintains. His statements came hours after administration officials announced that the US plans to effectively assume control of the sale of Venezuelan oil indefinitely.
While Republican lawmakers have largely supported the administration’s actions, Democrats on Wednesday reiterated their warnings that the U.S. was headed toward prolonged international intervention without clear legal authority, starting with Maduro’s own arrest, contrary to international law.
Are you talking to Delcy?
In this face to face with a media that he does not like and which he accuses, on numerous occasions, of selling out to the Democrats, Trump responded to questions about why he recognized Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as the new leader of Venezuela, the opposition whose party has led a successful electoral campaign against Maduro in 2024, until winning the elections, and recently won the Nobel Peace Prize.
However, he declined to comment when asked if he had spoken to Rodríguez.
“But Marco ([Rubio, el secretario de Estado] “He talks to her all the time,” he justifies. “I will tell you that we are in constant communication with her and with the Government,” he adds. Trump also did not commit to holding elections in Venezuela, a country with a long democratic tradition from the late 1950s until the arrival of Hugo Chávez to power in 1999.
“Trump seemed much more focused on the rescue mission than on the details of how to approach Venezuela’s future. He refused to reveal what might prompt him to deploy US forces in the country,” the newspaper says. “I wouldn’t want to tell him,” he confessed.
He dodged the question about why he refused to install in power , whom the US itself or European countries declared the winner of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential elections. González was essentially a substitute candidate for the main opposition leader, Machado.
Intimidation in the region
Shortly after four reporters from the New York Times met to speak with him, Trump paused the interview for , days after threatening to attack the country for its alleged role as a cocaine distribution center.
Upon connecting the call, the president invited reporters to remain in the Oval Office to listen to the conversation, on the condition that its content remain off the record. He was joined in the room by the vice president and also by Rubio, who left at the end of the call.
The call with Petro, which lasted about an hour, appeared to dispel any immediate threat of U.S. military action, and Trump indicated to the NOW who believed that the decapitation of the Maduro regime had intimidated other leaders in the region into falling into line. “Trump reveled in the success of the operation that stormed the heavily fortified complex of Caracas and resulted in the capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores,” the outlet states.
He also gave some details about the operation: he stated that the creation of a full-size replica of the complex was even ordered at a military installation in Kentucky. His fear, as the operation unfolded, was that it might end up being a “style disaster. That destroyed his entire administration.”
He was referring to the failed April 24, 1980, operation to rescue 52 American hostages held in Iran. An American helicopter collided with an aircraft in the desert, a tragedy that marked the legacy of Democrat Carter, but which led to the creation of much more disciplined and well-trained special operations forces. “I don’t know if he would have won the election,” Trump said of Carter, “but he certainly didn’t have a chance after that disaster.”
He compared the success of Maduro’s capture, in an operation that appears to have killed some 70 Venezuelans and Cubans, among others, with his predecessors’ operations that had gone wrong. “You know we didn’t have a Jimmy Carter crashing helicopters everywhere, we didn’t have one where they couldn’t perform the simplest maneuver,” he said, referring to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members.
“I can’t tell you”
Trump stated at the meeting, according to the preview published this morning, that he had already begun generating profits for the United States by obtaining oil that has been subject to sanctions. He referred to his Tuesday night announcement that the United States would obtain Venezuelan heavyweight. Its value would be about 2,000 million dollars.
However, he did not offer a time frame for that process and acknowledged that it would take years to reactivate the country’s neglected oil sector. “Oil will take a while,” he said.
Would you send US troops if the Venezuelan government prevented you from accessing the country’s oil? Would you send them if Venezuela refused to expel Russian and Chinese personnel, as your Administration has demanded? “I can’t tell you,” Trump repeated. “I really wouldn’t want to tell you, but we are treated with great respect. As you know, we get along very well with the current Administration.”
“They treat us with great respect. As you know, we get along very well with the current Administration (…). They are giving us everything we consider necessary”
He reiterated that Maduro’s allies are cooperating with the United States, despite their hostile public statements. “They are giving us everything we consider necessary,” he said. “Don’t forget that they took our oil away years ago.” He was referring to the nationalization of facilities built by American oil companies.
Trump has already been talking to American oil executives about the possibility of investing in Venezuelan fields, but many are reluctant, worried about the possibility that the country’s management will falter when the occupant of the White House leaves office, or about the possibility that the Venezuelan military and intelligence services will undermine the effort by being excluded from the profits.
Trump said he would like to travel to Venezuela in the future. “I think at some point it will be safe,” he concluded.
