Questions regarding Venezuela’s future leadership continue to swirl after the country’s toppled president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured by American forces and brought to the U.S., where they sit in detention in New York on Sunday.
President Donald Trump has vowed the United States would “run” the South American country until a democratic transition could occur. He doubled down on the claim Sunday night, saying the United States is “in charge” of Venezuela.
“Don’t ask me who’s in charge, because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Jan. 4. The president was returning to Washington, DC, after spending the holiday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
When asked what that means, Trump said, “It means we’re in charge.” However, earlier on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press said the U.S. is “not running” Venezuela but “running policy.”
“We want Venezuela to move in a certain direction, because not only do we think it’s good for the people of Venezuela, it’s in our national interest,” Rubio said.
Over the span of a few hours on Saturday, U.S. strikes targeted air defenses and other sites in Caracas and three other Venezuelan states, transporting Maduro and Flores thousands of miles over sea and air to the United States.
The operation marked a dramatic escalation of Trump‘s stance toward Venezuela after months of rising tensions, threats and oil tanker seizures. Maduro and his wife have been indicted on federal drug and weapons charges and are expected to attend an arraignment in New York City as early as Monday, according to multiple media reports.
As global reverberations continue to be felt, many questions remain unanswered, including those regarding the future of U.S.-Venezuela relations and how the South American nation will move forward.
While speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said he needs Venezuela’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez to provide the United States with “total access.” After Maduro was seized by U.S. forces, Rodríguez was declared the interim president of Venezuela.
“We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country that allow us to rebuild their country,” he said.
Earlier, Trump told reporters that he has not spoken to Rodríguez yet, but others have. He added that he will speak to her “at the right time.”
The president also said the U.S. did not give anything to Rodríguez in exchange for cooperating but noted “she’s cooperating.”
“Venezuela right now is a dead country. We have to bring it back, and we’re gonna have to have big investments by the oil companies to bring back the infrastructure ready to go,” Trump said.
Trump also told reporters on board Air Force One on Sunday that U.S. military intervention in Cuba is unlikely to be needed because the country appears to be ready to fall on its own.
“Cuba’s about to be down for the count,” he said.
Federal officials have said the Cuban government, which is an ally of Maduro’s administration, has maintained a presence in Venezuela by providing security advisors. According to Trump, “a lot of Cubans were killed” during the operation to capture Maduro on Saturday.
The president did not specify how many Cubans were killed but said “there was a lot of death on the other side.”
“A lot of Cubans were killed yesterday, trying to protect him,” Trump said in reference to Maduro.
The Cuban government said on Sunday that 32 of its citizens were killed during the U.S. military attack on Venezuela.
Following the capture of Maduro, Trump threatened military action against Colombia’s government and its president, Gustavo Petro, on Sunday night.
“Colombia is very sick, too, run by a sick man, who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States, and he’s not going to be doing it very long,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, in an apparent reference to Petro. “He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories. He’s not going to be doing it.”
When asked whether the U.S. would conduct a military operation against Colombia, which borders Venezuela, Trump said, “it sounds good to me.”
Venezuelan leader President Nicolás Maduro is scheduled to appear in federal court at noon Jan. 5 in New York, according to the District Court for the Southern District of New York media office.
Maduro will be arraigned on a four-count indictment charging him with leading a 25-year narco-terrorism conspiracy that included several high-ranking members of his administration.
He will appear before United States District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in Manhattan.
− Sarah Wire, USA TODAY
Venezuela’s new president Delcy Eloina Rodríguez Gómez assumed Venezuela’s most powerful office after U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3.
While the 56-year-old, who served as vice president, continues to insist Maduro remains Venezuela’s legitimate leader, she’s seen by the Trump administration as someone willing to negotiate with the United States.
Rodríguez has deep roots in the country’s hard-core leftist politics, but she doesn’t face U.S. drug trafficking charges, unlike Maduro. She has appeared on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of sanctioned individuals for at least a decade, dating back to the Obama administration, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Once head of Maduro’s communications ministry, later foreign minister and then vice president, Rodríguez is listed as ranking among Venezuelan officials suspected to be involved in anti-democratic actions or policies, serious human rights abuses and public corruption.
Trump in an interview on Sunday issued a warning for Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez.
“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told The Atlantic a day after U.S. military forces captured the former leader.
Rodríguez previously rejected Trump’s claims that she was willing to work with his administration to make changes in Venezuela after the U.S. struck key Venezuelan military bases on Saturday. Rodríguez said the country would continue carrying out Maduro’s policies and would “never be a colony ever again.”
When asked by “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker if democratic elections could be held in Venezuela within 30 days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday called the question “premature.”
“Elections? This is a country that’s been governed by this regime now for 14 or 15 years,” he said on the Jan. 4 NBC broadcast, adding that in recent elections Maduro refused to count votes to retain power. “All of that is premature at this point.”
Rubio called Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado “fantastic,” but he stopped short of advocating for her to lead a transition government.
“The immediate reality is that unfortunately, and sadly… the vast majority of the opposition is no longer present inside of Venezuela,” he said.
A day after U.S. strikes in Venezuela, questions swirled about whether American forces would intervene in Greenland.
Since taking office in 2025, Trump has repeatedly floated buying the ice-covered Arctic island from Denmark and has refused to rule out taking the resource-rich land through military force. Trump has argued that annexing Greenland is a national security necessity, noting its mass of critical minerals and strategic location.
He renewed those calls Sunday in an interview with “The Atlantic.”
“We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense” Trump told the outlet, reportedly describing the island as “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships.”
While speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, Trump reiterated his stance.
“It’s so strategic right now. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place,” Trump told reporters. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”
The same day, Katie Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted a photo of Greenland covered with the American flag. Above it, Miller wrote “SOON.”
However, the leaders of Denmark and Greenland on Jan. 4 urged Trump to stop threatening to take over Greenland.
“It makes absolutely no sense to talk about the U.S. needing to take over Greenland. The U.S. has no right to annex any of the three countries in the Danish Kingdom,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement on Sunday.
The United States doesn’t need Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, Rubio told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. But Trump will try to block America’s foes from gaining influence in the country or control over its resources, the secretary of state said.
“We don’t need Venezuela’s oil,” Rubio said. “We have plenty of oil in the United States. What we’re not going to allow is for the oil industry and Venezuela to be controlled by adversaries of the United States.”
Venezuela is recognized as having the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Trump has said U.S. oil companies could start investing again in the region, a practice halted when Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, expropriated the assets of foreign oil companies.
Rubio said U.S. adversaries including Iran, China and Russia “are exploiting and extracting” resources all over the world. “They’re not going to do it in the Western hemisphere,” he said.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, once a staunch Trump ally, blasted the president’s attack on Venezuela as a sharp departure from his “America First” campaign promises.
Greene, who earlier this year had a public falling out with Trump, criticized his decision to capture Maduro as not being aligned with promises he made during the 2024 presidential election to end American involvement in a wide range of foreign conflicts.
“This is the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn’t serve the American people, that actually serves the big corporations, the banks, and the oil executives,” Greene said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Trump during an earlier press conference had defended the attack as part of his America First agenda, arguing that he wanted to protect the United States’ oil interests in Venezuela and ensure America has “good neighbors.”
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves of any country worldwide. But the reserves have been almost completely off limits to American oil giants since Venezuela placed them in the hands of a state-run company in the mid-1970s. After the Jan. 3 capture of Maduro, Trump said the United States would have a “presence in Venezuela, as it pertains to oil.”
“My understanding of America first is strictly for the American people, not for the big donors that donate to big politicians, not for the special interests that constantly roam the halls in Washington, and not foreign countries that demand their priorities put first over Americans,” she said.
Rubio on Sunday said Maduro was given “very generous offers” to leave Venezuela before U.S. forces swooped into the country to extract him.
“He could have left Venezuela as recently as a week and a half ago,” Rubio told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There were opportunities for him to avoid all of this.”
The Trump administration has long sought Maduro’s ouster. Though the United States hasn’t had a formal diplomatic relationship with Venezuela in years, special envoy Richard Grenell had been talking to Maduro, searching for a negotiated solution.
Maduro “has made a career out of not keeping deals and figuring out how to save himself by buying time,” Rubio said. “But President Trump was not going to fall into that trap.”
Maduro’s allies in Venezuela were still in charge and have denounced their leader’s “kidnapping” as part of an imperialist oil grab.
Streets were far quieter than usual on Sunday as Venezuelans anxiously discussed what would come next. Some stocked up on essentials but many simply hunkered indoors.
“I’ve just taken the dog out and it feels like an abandoned city, people are shut inside,” said Alejandra Palencia, 35, a psychologist in the city of Maracay. “There is fear and uncertainty.”
Once one of the most prosperous nations in Latin America, Venezuela’s economy nosedived further under Maduro, sending about one in five Venezuelans abroad in one of the world’s biggest exoduses. They were largely jubilant at the exit of Maduro, whose security forces repeatedly crushed opposition protests.
− Reuters
Rubio told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that American officials “expect to see changes in Venezuela, changes of all kinds – long-term, short-term – but the most immediate changes are the ones that are in the national interest of the United States.”
Rubio dodged answering host Kristen Welker’s direct question about who, precisely, is running the country in the wake of Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez assumed control of the country on Saturday following Maduro’s capture. Though Rodriguez denounced the U.S. operation as a “kidnapping,” Rubio suggested Venezuelan leadership would be more compliant to U.S. demands in the wake of Maduro’s ouster.
“We expect to see more compliance and cooperation than we were previously receiving,” he said on the show. “With Nicolas Maduro, you could not make a deal or an arrangement.”
No U.S. military members were killed during the Saturday strikes on Venezuelan military bases, Trump said.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said some civilians and members of the Venezuelan military were killed, but official numbers have not yet been released. The New York Times reported that at least 40 people were killed in the attack, based on a conversation with an anonymous senior Venezuelan official.
The United States carried out strikes on major military sites and critical infrastructure in Venezuela, including Fuerte Tiuna, the main military base in Caracas.
The attack on Venezuela and subsequent capture of Maduro comes about a month after Trump designated the leader and his government allies a foreign terrorist organization.
Maduro has since been indicted on charges of “narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machineguns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess” the weapons, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on X on Saturday.
Much of the strife stems from questions around the legitimacy of Maduro’s 2024 election and accusations against the Venezuelan president of trafficking drugs into the United States. Those accusations can be traced back to Trump’s first administration, when Maduro and over a dozen other Venezuelan officials were indicted by the United States in March 2020 for drug trafficking charges.
While speaking to Fox News on Saturday morning, Trump said the action in Venezuela was taken because drugs killed about 300,000 Americans each year. “We don’t lose that much in a war,” he said. “We are stopping drugs from coming into this country and nobody has been able to do it until we came along,” Trump said.
Venezuela is a Caribbean nation in the northernmost part of South America. It shares borders with Colombia, Brazil and Guyana.
Popular destinations in the Caribbean lie north of Venezuela, including Aruba, Curaçao, St. Lucia and Barbados and were among those affected by flight restrictions in the region during the U.S. strike.
The country holds the world’s largest oil reserves.
Airlines resumed flights in the Caribbean on Sunday after flight restrictions lifted overnight in the wake of a U.S. strike on Venezuela.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the restrictions expired at midnight, and major airlines announced they were resuming flights to and from 13 impacted airports. Hundreds of flights had been canceled on Saturday out of Puerto Rico’s main airport.
Delta said in a statement it expects to operate its normal roster of Caribbean flights on Sunday, “with possible schedule adjustments as airline resources are repositioned.”
In a statement, American Airlines said “it’s all hands on deck” to move passengers in the region. The airline added some 3,700 seats on more than a dozen extra flights to and from San Juan, Puerto Rico, as well as Aruba, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, Antigua, Barbados, Dominica and Barbados and its hubs in Miami and Charlotte, North Carolina.
United Airlines told USA TODAY it expected to operate most scheduled flights in the region on Jan. 4. The airline is also working to add new flights for travelers.
All the major airlines issued travel waivers to passengers affected by the cancellations, waiving some rebooking fees.
FlightAware.com showed 17 cancellations on Sunday into and out of San Juan’s Luis Muñoz Marin International, compared with more than 400 a day earlier.
Maduro and Flores landed in Brooklyn before heading to the Metropolitan Detention Center the evening of Jan. 3.
By then, they had been on multiple types of aircraft, plus a massive warship, in a journey spanning at least three nations and two time zones.
After the couple was taken from their Caracas home, they were loaded onto a helicopter, where the raid force had to fight its way out of Venezuelan airspace, according to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine.
They were then loaded onto the USS Iwo Jima, a U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship, and sailed across the Caribbean Sea to the U.S military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Next, they were transferred to a plane to fly the final stretch to New York, landing shortly before sunset Eastern time at Stewart Air National Guard Base about 50 miles north of Manhattan. Once embarked, they were placed in helicopters and flown to Westside Heliport in Manhattan, then finally on to the Brooklyn detention facility.
Pope Leo XIV said he was following developments in Venezuela with “great concern” as he spoke in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday.
Leo, the first U.S. pope, called for Venezuela to remain an independent country and for respect for human rights around the world.
“The good of the beloved Venezuelan people must prevail over every other consideration, and lead to overcoming violence and taking up a journey of justice and peace, guaranteeing the sovereignty of the country, ensuring the rule of law written in the Constitution, and respecting the human and civil rights of all, and working together to build a peaceful future of collaboration, stability and harmony, with special attention to the poorest who suffer because of the difficult economic situation,” Leo said.
In the first clear video of the Venezuelan leader since he arrived on U.S. soil Saturday evening, Maduro was seen being walked down a hallway by federal agents.
The 12-second clip was posted to X by Fox News Contributor Paul Mauro and shared by the White House. In the video, Maduro is seen clutching a bottle of water and dressed in black pants, a black hoodie and hat.
His hands appear to be restrained, while three agents walk him down a hallway with a carpet that reads “DEA.” He is overheard saying, “goodnight” and “happy New Year” before walking out of the video frame.
The Constitutional Chamber of Venezuela’s Supreme Court ordered on Saturday that Vice President Delcy Rodríguez assume the role of acting president of the country.
The court ruling said that Rodríguez would assume “the office of President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in order to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defense of the Nation.”
The ruling added that the court will debate the matter in order to “determine the applicable legal framework to guarantee the continuity of the State, the administration of government, and the defense of sovereignty in the face of the forced absence of the President of the Republic.”
Contributing: Reuters