THE United States will “run” Venezuela following an overnight military operation where Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, and his wife were captured and explosions rocked the country’s capital of Caracas, President Donald Trump said Saturday.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a press conference from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. “It has to be judicious, because that’s what we are all about.”
The president did not provide details of how the United States will run Venezuela, but said that his administration is determining who will be in charge of the country.
He declined to endorse Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, to lead the country.
He also did not provide a timeline for how long the U.S. will run the country, saying that it will be “a period of time” as they rebuild Venezuela’s infrastructure.
The United States carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela overnight, Trump announced in a Truth Social post in the early hours of Saturday. Congress was not notified ahead of the strikes due to concerns that lawmakers would “leak,” the president said. Some Democrats have criticized the president’s actions, with some calling it an “unjustified war.”
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were being taken to New York, where they have been indicted on federal drug and weapons charges and “will soon face the full wrath of American justice,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
Venezuela’s government declared a state of emergency and denounced what it called “extremely serious military aggression” by the U.S.
SOURCE: USA TOTAY
