President Donald Trump signaled an extended American involved in Venezuela after the U.S. military captured Nicolas Maduro to face drug charges in New York.
In comments to reporters on Saturday, Trump said U.S. officials would be in charge and didn’t shy away from putting troops in the country.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe proper and judicious transition,” he said.
Trump also suggested the U.S. would use Venezuela’s oil wealth to pay for the mission and reimburse American companies that operated there previously but whose assets were nationalized by Maduro’s socialist regime.
In addition, he predicted U.S. energy companies would spend billions of dollars to rebuild the country’s oil infrastructure and boost extraction. At the same time, Trump added that the U.S. oil embargo on Venezuela will remain in effect.
He suggested the U.S. State Department and Pentagon will control Venezuela with the cooperation of officials in the Maduro government.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been in contact with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who said “we’ll do whatever you need,” according to Trump.
“I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn’t have a choice,” he added. “We’re going to have this done right. We’re not going to just do this with Maduro then leave like everybody else—leave and say, you know, let it go to hell. If we just left, it has zero chance of ever coming back. We’ll run it properly. We’ll run it professionally.”
Trump dismissed opposition figure María Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, as a potential new leader, saying she lacks enough support at home. For her part, Machado said on social media that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, whom the opposition says won last year’s election, “must immediately assume his constitutional mandate” as president.
When pressed on the potential role of the U.S. military going forward and whether there will be boots on the ground, Trump left it open as a possibility.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he said. “We’re not afraid of it. We’re we don’t mind saying it, and we’re gonna make sure that that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain.”
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told reporters that U.S. forces remain in the region at a high state of readiness.
Trump said the military is ready to stage another, much larger attack if necessary, but said that appears unlikely given the success of the initial strike. Meanwhile, the U.S. fleet that has assembled in the region will remain in position until U.S. demands “have been fully met and fully satisfied,” he said.
For now, U.S. involvement appears focused on the energy sector, according to his remarks. Venezuela has the world’s largest proved oil reserves, but production has waned and the economy has collapsed amid American sanctions and Maduro’s mismanagement.
“We’re gonna have presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil,” Trump said. “We’re sending our expertise in, so you may need something, not very much. But now we’re gonna 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.”
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