Rubio Clarifies Trump’s Venezuela Remarks: US Will Not Directly Govern the Nation
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on Sunday that the United States has no intention of assuming day-to-day governance of Venezuela, seeking to clear up President Donald Trump’s recent comments suggesting the US would “run” the country after Nicolás Maduro’s capture.
In an interview with CBS News, Rubio explained that Trump’s reference to “running” Venezuela pertained to maintaining an existing “oil quarantine” on sanctioned Venezuelan tankers as leverage to push for policy reforms. “They will continue enforcing the oil blockade, which was already in place, and use it to press for policy changes in Venezuela,” Rubio said, according to the Associated Press. He emphasized that this approach differs significantly from past US interventions, noting, “The whole foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan. This is not the Middle East. And our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere.”
Trump had previously indicated that the US would oversee Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” is achieved, with American oil companies repairing the nation’s deteriorated infrastructure to generate revenue.
The statements come in the wake of a major US military operation on Saturday, dubbed ‘Operation Absolute Resolve,’ which resulted in Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, being apprehended in Caracas. US special forces conducted targeted strikes on military bases amid explosions in the city, with aircraft overhead for over two hours. The couple was transported via the USS Iwo Jima to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Maduro and Flores face federal charges in the Southern District of New York, including conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism, cocaine importation, and illegal possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Maduro has long rejected accusations of leading a cartel, claiming the US is using its “war on drugs” as a pretext to access Venezuela’s vast oil reserves—estimated at 303 billion barrels, or nearly 20 percent of global totals, per the US Energy Information Administration.
Despite the rhetoric, the administration has yet to finalize any specific plans for US involvement in managing or transitioning the government. Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president by the country’s Supreme Court, pledging to comply with US demands while simultaneously declaring on state television that Maduro remains the “only one president in Venezuela.”