Trump claims US will ‘run’ Venezuela in interim after kidnapping of Maduro
US President Donald Trump says the United States will take control of Venezuela until a “safe, proper, and judicious” transition of power has taken place, following the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro.
Speaking at a press conference in Florida on Tuesday, Trump said that Washington would oversee Venezuela's governance during an interim period, without providing further details.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” he said. “We don’t want to be involved with somebody else getting in and we have the same situation we had for the last long period of years.”
Trump said that officials from his administration would run Venezuela. “The people that are standing right behind me” are going to be running it “for a period of time,” he said, referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
He claimed the American presence was already in place in the country, though there were no immediate signs that that was the case.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, the US armed forces carried out coordinated strikes on civilian and military targets in Caracas and several other states.
Trump said that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been kidnapped following a large-scale strike against the country, and that the couple had been flown out of Venezuela.
Officials said Maduro and his wife were aboard an American warship on their way to New York, where they were to face criminal charges.
The Venezuelan government has condemned the attacks as a direct act of military aggression aimed at seizing the country's oil and mineral wealth.
The US military action comes after months of pressure on Venezuela, including a buildup of forces in South America and attacks on vessels in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, accused of carrying drugs.
Maduro has dismissed the accusations, labeling them as a pretext for the White House to attack the South American country.
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