{"id":673789,"date":"2026-01-04T18:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T18:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/673789\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T18:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T18:20:15","slug":"top-republicans-backpedal-from-trump-claim-that-us-will-run-venezuela-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/673789\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Republicans backpedal from Trump claim that US will run Venezuela | Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and prominent Republicans swiftly backpedaled from Donald Trump\u2019s assertion<\/a> that the US will run Venezuela<\/a> in transition after US forces snatched the president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, and brought him to the US to face federal criminal charges.<\/p>\n

Rubio appeared on numerous US politics<\/a> shows on Sunday morning to defend the US operation in the early hours of Saturday to capture Maduro and his wife despite critics calling the operation illegal on multiple levels and the White House failing to demonstrate how it would run the South American nation.<\/p>\n

The secretary of state was challenged repeatedly in a number of appearances to confirm whether the US would run Venezuela<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rubio said on ABC that the US had \u201cleverage\u201d over the country and that: \u201cWe expect that it\u2019s going to lead to results here. We\u2019re hope so \u2026 hopeful that it does. Positive results. For the people of Venezuela, but ultimately, most importantly, for us, in the national interests of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that the US would \u201cset the conditions\u201d so that Venezuela is no longer a \u201cnarco-trafficking paradise\u201d aligned with US adversaries including Iran and militant proxies such as Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos asked a follow-up question. \u201cWhat is the legal authority for the United States to be running Venezuela?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rubio responded: \u201cI explained to you what our goals are and how we\u2019re going to use the leverage to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The previous day Trump, speaking at a press conference in Florida just hours after the strikes and raid on Caracas and elsewhere in Venezuela, said the US would run<\/a> Venezuela \u201cwith a group\u201d and would be \u201cdesignating various people\u201d in charge, while pointing to Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the chairiman of the joint chiefs of staff Dan Caine, behind him.<\/p>\n

Trump also said that Maduro\u2019s vice-president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, now considered the interim president by Venezuelan leadership, had spoken to Rubio and had told the US she would do whatever it needed, with Trump adding: \u201cShe really doesn\u2019t have a choice.\u201d Rodr\u00edguez appeared on state television in Venezuela not long afterwards and, in contrast, was sharply critical of the US actions and insisted that the country \u201cwill never again be anyone\u2019s colony\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rubio told CBS\u2019s Face the Nation on Sunday morning that actions were different from rhetoric and it was too soon to know how the Venezuelan leadership would now respond to the US\u2019s audacious action in the country and, now, pressure to conform to US plans to stop drug trafficking and control its oil operations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to make our assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly. We\u2019re going to find out. Do I know what decisions they\u2019re going to make? I do not. But I know that if they don\u2019t make the right decisions the United Sates will retain multiple levers of influence to ensure our interest are protected and that includes the oil quarantine that\u2019s in place, among other things \u2026 we\u2019re going to see what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Rubio told NBC that the US was not at war in Venezuela and did not currently have US forces on the ground there.<\/p>\n

In response to anchor Kristen Welker asking if he, Hegseth or any of the US leadership Trump indicated was going to be running Venezuela during its transition, Rubio said: \u201cWell, it\u2019s running policy \u2026 we want Venezuela to move in a certain direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, also rowed back on Trump\u2019s assertions, saying there were \u201cstill a lot of questions to be answered\u201d about what happens next in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

When asked who was running Venezuela right now he responded: \u201cWho is not running Venezuela is Maduro.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cotton said Rubio was in consultation with the Venezuelan government and with the opposition to \u201csee what a transition government would look like \u2026 we will see whether they [the post-Maduro Venezuelan leadership] will let the opposition back into the country and hold elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump on Saturday was dismissive of the opposition, headed by recent Nobel peace prize winner Mar\u00eda Corina Machado<\/a>, who is in exile, saying she did not have sufficient support and respect in Venezuela, without being more specific about whether he was referring to leadership, the military or voters.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Sunday Trump threatened Rodr\u00edguez that \u201cif she doesn\u2019t do what\u2019s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a telephone interview with<\/a> the Atlantic magazine Trump also appeared to acknowledge US aspirations in the country as amounting to something congressional Democrats say they were explicitly told<\/a> was not the plan \u2013 regime change.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can\u2019t get any worse,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

Cotton said the US did not recognize Rodr\u00edguez as legitimate. Maduro was widely considered to have lost<\/a> the 2024 presidential election in Venezuela, but stayed in power anyway.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cThe new leaders of Venezuela need to meet our demands,\u201d he said. \u201cOur demands are \u2026 that we want them to stop the drug trafficking. We want them to stop the weapons trafficking. We want them to expel the Cubans and the Iranians and the Islamic radicals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senator Jim Jordan, a Republican representing Ohio and the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, also could not confirm that the US would run Venezuela.<\/p>\n

When asked directly on CNN what Trump meant when he indicated that the group standing behind him at the press conference would be in charge of the plan for the US to run the country, Jordan said: \u201cWe do not know exactly what that means.\u201d When asked what is next for Venezuela, he said: \u201cWe\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n

And despite the mandate of the US Congress to act as a check on executive power and interrogate controversial actions such as the Venezuelan operation, Jordan said he trusted Trump, Rubio and Hegseth in \u201cmaking the best decisions\u201d and he trusted the US military.<\/p>\n

Democratic congressman Jim Himes said that<\/a> Jordan\u2019s answers were \u201cgiving the game away\u201d that the Republican-controlled Congress was not interested in acting as a check on the White House and condemned the intervention in Venezuela as an \u201cimperial adventure\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, earlier on CBS, Rubio referred to the current Venezuelan regime and defended the US decision not to remove more of Maduro\u2019s inner circle.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re gonna go in and suck up five people?\u201d he said. \u201cOkay, they\u2019re already complaining about this one operation. Imagine the howls we would have from everybody else if we actually had to go and stay there four days to capture four other people \u2026 we got the top priority, the number one person on the list.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and prominent Republicans swiftly backpedaled from Donald Trump\u2019s assertion that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-673789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115838217259501144","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}