{"id":120136,"date":"2026-01-04T22:44:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T22:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/120136\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T22:44:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T22:44:20","slug":"to-run-venezuela-trump-presses-existing-regime-to-kneel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/120136\/","title":{"rendered":"To ‘run’ Venezuela, Trump presses existing regime to kneel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Top officials in the Trump administration clarified their position on \u201crunning\u201d Venezuela<\/a> after seizing its president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, over the weekend, pressuring the government that remains in power there Sunday to acquiesce to U.S. demands on oil access and drug enforcement, or else face further military action.<\/p>\n

Their goal appears to be the establishment of a pliant vassal state in Caracas that keeps the current government \u2014 led by Maduro for more than a decade \u2014 largely in place, but finally defers to the whims of Washington after turning away from the United States for a quarter-century.<\/p>\n

It leaves little room for the ascendance of Venezuela\u2019s democratic opposition, which won the country\u2019s last national election<\/a>, according to the State Department, European capitals and international monitoring bodies.<\/p>\n

President Trump and his top aides said they would try to work with Maduro\u2019s handpicked vice president and current interim president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, to run the country and its oil sector \u201cuntil such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,\u201d offering no time frame for proposed elections.<\/p>\n

Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem underscored the strategy in a series of interviews Sunday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf she doesn\u2019t do what\u2019s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,\u201d Trump told the Atlantic magazine, referring to Rodr\u00edguez. \u201cRebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can\u2019t get any worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rubio said that a U.S. naval quarantine of Venezuelan oil tankers would continue unless and until Rodr\u00edguez begins cooperating with the U.S. administration, referring to the blockade \u2014 and the lingering threat of additional military action from the fleet off Venezuela\u2019s coast \u2014 as \u201cleverage\u201d over the remnants of Maduro\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that,\u201d Rubio told CBS News. \u201cWe continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes \u2014 not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN that he had been in touch with the administration since the Saturday night operation that snatched Maduro and his wife from their bedroom, whisking them away to New York to face criminal charges. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s vow to \u201crun\u201d the country, Cotton said, \u201cmeans the new leaders of Venezuela need to meet our demands.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDelcy Rodr\u00edguez, and the other ministers in Venezuela, understand now what the U.S. military is capable of,\u201d Cotton said, adding: \u201cIt is a fact that she and other indicted and sanctioned individuals are in Venezuela. They have control of the military and security forces. We have to deal with that fact. But that does not make them the legitimate leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we want is a future Venezuelan government that will be pro-American, that will contribute to stability, order and prosperity, not only in Venezuela but in our own backyard. That probably needs to include new elections,\u201d Cotton said.<\/p>\n

Whether Rodr\u00edguez will cooperate with the administration is an open question. <\/p>\n

Trump said Saturday that she seemed amenable to making \u201cVenezuela great again\u201d in a conversation with Rubio. But the interim president delivered a speech hours later demanding Maduro\u2019s return, and vowing that Venezuela would \u201cnever again be a colony of any empire.\u201d<\/p>\n

The developments have concerned senior figures in Venezuela\u2019s democratic opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, last year\u2019s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was ultimately stolen by Maduro.<\/p>\n

In his Saturday news conference, Trump dismissed Machado, saying that the revered opposition leader was \u201ca very nice woman,\u201d but \u201cdoesn\u2019t have the respect within the country\u201d to lead.<\/p>\n

Elliott Abrams, Trump\u2019s special envoy to Venezuela in his first term, said he was skeptical that Rodr\u00edguez \u2014 an acolyte of Hugo Ch\u00e1vez and avowed supporter of Chavismo<\/a> throughout the Maduro era \u2014 would betray the cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe insult to Machado was bizarre, unfair \u2014 and simply ignorant,\u201d Abrams told The Times. \u201cWho told him that there was no respect for her?\u201d<\/p>\n

Maduro was booked in New York and flown at night over the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he is in federal custody at a facility that has housed inmates including Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs, Ghislaine Maxwell, Bernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried. <\/p>\n

He is expected to be arraigned on federal charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices as soon as Monday.<\/p>\n

Although few in Washington lamented Maduro\u2019s removal, Democratic lawmakers criticized the operation as another act of ousting a foreign government by a Republican president that could have violated international law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe invasion of Venezuela has nothing to do with American security. Venezuela is not a security threat to the U.S.,\u201d said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut. \u201cThis is about making Trump\u2019s oil industry and Wall Street friends rich. Trump\u2019s foreign policy \u2014 the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela \u2014 is fundamentally corrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their Saturday news conference, and in subsequent interviews, Trump and Rubio said that targeting Venezuela was in part about reestablishing U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere, reasserting the philosophy of President Monroe as China and Russia work to enhance their presence in the region. The Trump administration\u2019s national security strategy, published last month, previewed a renewed focus on Latin America after the region faced neglect from Washington over decades.<\/p>\n

Trump left unclear whether his military actions in the region would end in Caracas, a long-standing U.S. adversary, or whether he is willing to turn the U.S. armed forces on America\u2019s allies.<\/p>\n

In his interview with the Atlantic, Trump suggested that \u201cindividual countries\u201d would be addressed on a case-by-case basis. On Saturday, he reiterated a threat to the president of Colombia, a major non-NATO ally, to \u201cwatch his ass,\u201d over an ongoing dispute about Bogota\u2019s cooperation on drug enforcement.<\/p>\n

On Sunday morning, the United Nations Security Council held an urgent meeting to discuss the legality of the U.S. operation in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

It was not Russia or China \u2014 permanent members of the council and long-standing competitors \u2014 who called the session, nor France, whose government has questioned whether the operation violated international law, but Colombia, a nonpermanent member who joined the council less than a week ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Top officials in the Trump administration clarified their position on \u201crunning\u201d Venezuela after seizing its president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7363,63375,48,52,51,47,50,49,62984,63377,4694,6283,63376,10263,9299,27469,1695,63374,2281,9298,558],"class_list":["post-120136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-country","tag-delcy-rodriguez","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-maduro","tag-narco-terrorism-conspiracy","tag-new-york","tag-president","tag-regime","tag-region","tag-rubio","tag-russia","tag-trump-administration","tag-trump-press","tag-u-s","tag-venezuela","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}