Trump Says U.S. Will ‘Run’ Venezuela After Capture of Maduro

President Donald Trump said the U.S. will take over Venezuela’s government for an unstated amount of time, in a stunning regime change announcement after his administration captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years,” the president said Saturday during a press conference at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort. “We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela, that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.”

Trump said the U.S. will prompt oil companies to go into Venezuela and “spend billions of dollars” to rebuild the infrastructure for more profitable oil production, as he read off notes inside the Mar-a-Lago Tea Room, flanked by administration officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

“The future will be determined by the ability to protect commerce and territory and resources that are core to national security. These are core to our national security,” Trump said.

Taking questions from reporters, the president said there will be a “group of people running it” without specifying who, except to say Rubio and Hegseth would be involved. Asked if U.S. troops would be in Venezuela, Trump said that the United States is “not afraid of boots on the ground.”

The president later clarified that the American presence will specifically be for oil.

Trump threatened that a second wave of attacks could come if the U.S. deems it necessary. The armada of U.S. ships is still at the ready, and the oil embargo remains, Trump said, adding that the U.S. “retains all military options until United States demands have been fully met and fully satisfied.”

“So we were prepared to do a second wave if we needed to do so. We actually assumed that a second wave would be necessary, but now it’s probably not. The first wave, if you’d like to call it that, the first attack, was so successful, we probably don’t have to do a second. But we’re prepared to do a second wave, a much bigger wave, actually,” Trump said.

He declared the Venezuelan people as free, saying, “the dictator and terrorist, Maduro, is finally gone. In Venezuela, people are free. They’re free again. It’s been a long time for them, but they’re free.”

The president’s remarks come after he announced early Saturday morning the capture of the Venezuelan leader and his wife after a “large-scale strike.” This marks the administration’s most aggressive action in the region since Trump took office.

Maduro’s guards “were completely overwhelmed and very quickly incapacitated,” Trump said. Hours earlier, the president said in an interview on Fox News that the mission was supposed to happen four days prior, but was postponed because of the weather. The military broke into Maduro’s residence, including through steel doors, he said.

“If you would have seen what I saw last night, you would have been very impressed. I’m not sure that you’ll ever get to see it, but it was an incredible thing to see not a single American service member was killed, and not a single piece of American equipment was lost,” he added at the press conference later.

Military officials said this operation came after months of planning and rehearsal. Dubbed Operation Absolute Resolve, it included the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency as well, according to officials. Officials said that he gave the order at 10:46 p.m. EST, and strikes were seen in the country early Saturday. It involved more than 150 aircrafts, launching from 20 different bases both land and sea.

Hegseth, in brief opening remarks, praised the members who conducted it.

“The coordination, the stealth, the lethality, the precision, the very long arm of American justice, all on full display in the middle of the night. Nicolás Maduro had his chance, just like Iran had their chance until they didn’t. And until he didn’t.”

The Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela have for months been predicated on stopping the flow of narcotics, but in recent weeks, the administration has publicly fixated on recovering “stolen oil” from Venezuela.

Trump on Saturday claimed that Venezuela seized and sold American oil and American assets, costing the U.S. “billions and billions of dollars.”

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said Saturday.

Since Maduro’s apprehension, Trump has assured that American companies will benefit from Venezuela’s oil reserves, which are the largest in the world.

Chevron is the only American oil company currently operating in Venezuela. In a statement the company said, “Chevron remains focused on the safety and wellbeing of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets. We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”

Rubio, who spoke last before the president took questions, argued that that Trump was the president of peace, despite the strikes that Venezuelan officials say killed residents.

“Nicolás Maduro had multiple opportunities to avoid this. He was provided multiple very, very, very generous offers, and chose instead to act like a wild man. Chose instead to play around, and the result is what we saw tonight,” Rubio said.

The president also said that the administration had been in communication with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez who has offered to help with the path forward. Asked about opposition leader María Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, Trump cast doubt that she could take power.

“She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country,” he said.

The 29-page indictment of Maduro, his wife, and others makes no mention of stolen oil.

Maduro and other defendants received five charges, including with Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy and Cocaine Importation Conspiracy.

The 29-page indictment alleges that Maduro and others “engaged in a relentless campaign of cocaine trafficking … resulting in the distribution of thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States.”

Though the pretext for the administration’s actions has been the flow of fentanyl to the United States, fentanyl is not mentioned in the indictment.

The document further alleges that Maduro provided support and cover for the movement of cocaine through Venezuela “with knowledge that their drug trafficking partners would move the cocaine north to the United States.”

Trump said Saturday that Maduro is being moved to New York, where he will face trial in New York’s Southern District.

“Many Americans, hundreds of thousands over the years, died because of him,” Trump said. “Maduro and his wife will soon face the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil.”

Trump said his administration did not give members of Congress notification ahead of the operation because they would likely “leak.” Rubio defended the lack of advance notice as well.

Congressional Democrats have rebuked the Trump administration’s actions, arguing that the ousting of Maduro was an overreach and potentially unconstitutional.

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Correction: A prior version of this story misspelled the name of the Venezuela’s vice president.