Donald Trump has thrown a wrench into Marco Rubio’s course correction on Venezuela by insisting the U.S. is “in charge” of the country just hours after his secretary of state walked back that claim.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, Trump once again implied that the U.S. will be running the South American country after the administration captured its leader, Nicolás Maduro, and charged him in New York with drug trafficking and “narco-terrorism” offenses.
“Don’t ask me who’s in charge, because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial,” Trump said, before immediately adding: “We’re in charge.”
Trump had already floated the idea during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday, saying the U.S. would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”
Rubio, the president’s top diplomat, then sought to distance the administration from the suggestion that the U.S. intends to exercise outright control over Venezuela rather than its newly appointed acting leader, Delcy Rodríguez, who served as vice president under Maduro.
In a series of Sunday media appearances, Rubio offered vague assurances that the U.S. is not attempting to govern Venezuela directly, but instead plans to oversee policy and monitor how the country manages its lucrative oil industry during the upheaval.
“It’s running policy,” Rubio said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “We want Venezuela to move in a certain direction because not only do we think it’s good for the people of Venezuela, it’s in our national interest.”
In a separate appearance on CBS News’ Face the Nation, Rubio said that “none of the money from the oil gets to the people” in Venezuela, adding that the U.S. will continue to assess quarantined oil tankers targeted by sanctions as part of its blockade.
“That remains in place, and that’s a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue until we see changes that not only further the national interest of the United States, which is number one, but also lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela,” Rubio said. “That’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that.”
A White House official told The New York Times that Rubio’s comments do not contradict Trump’s remarks, arguing the secretary of state was merely clarifying what the president meant by “run.”
Author Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast’s Inside Trump’s Head podcast that sources said the president had taken even his own aides and Cabinet by surprise with his comments about the U.S. running Venezuela.
“Everyone—all of the people, even the people on the stage—were stupefied by this announcement that we were taking over Venezuela, that we were going to run an entirely dysfunctional country of 30 million people, and that it was going to be done by these people standing behind Trump on the stage,” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles.
Speaking aboard Air Force One, Trump said the U.S. will “bring back” Venezuela, with control over oil revenue playing a central role.
“It’s a dead country right now,” Trump said. “It’s a country that, frankly, we would have been if I had lost the election, we would have been a dead country. We would have been Venezuela on steroids.”
Trump added that he hopes Venezuela’s oil companies will now invest heavily in rebuilding the country’s infrastructure.
Maduro is scheduled to appear in a New York courtroom on Monday, where he faces drug trafficking and weapons charges.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the State Department for comment.
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