President Donald Trump said the US would “run” Venezuela “until such time we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition” following the US military’s capture of the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from Caracas in an overnight operation that Trump hailed as a “spectacular assault.”
During a press conference Saturday, Trump did not provide specifics on how long the US would oversee the country or what that would entail, only saying “a group of people” would be designated to run it.
Trump’s responses through the press conference suggested that access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves were central to the US campaign to overthrow Maduro. Trump said that American oil companies will go into Venezuela and “spend billions of dollars” and “fix the broken oil infrastructure.”
He said the oil revenue from there would be used to reimburse Venezuelans who were forced to flee the country, and also to reimburse the US oil companies, adding that the US would sell Venezuelan oil to China and other countries.
Trump said the US operation rendered the Venezuelan military “powerless” and that Maduro was captured “in the dead of the night,” suggesting that the US turned off the power in the capital of Caracas. He said that the Maduros are set to be indicted in New York for carrying out an alleged “campaign of deadly narco-terrorism against the US and its citizens.”
Operation “Absolute Resolve” was months in the making, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Saturday. Trump said the military was prepared to stage a second “and much larger” attack if needed.