{"id":94754,"date":"2026-01-09T14:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T14:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/94754\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T14:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T14:22:10","slug":"trump-cancels-second-wave-of-venezuela-attacks-citing-cooperation-prisoner-releases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/94754\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u00a0cancels ‘second wave’ of Venezuela attacks, citing ‘cooperation,’ prisoner releases"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump announced early Friday he was calling off an \u201cexpected second wave\u201d of attacks on Venezuela after the South American country announced it would begin releasing political prisoners<\/a> less than a week after US special forces captured Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cVenezuela is releasing large numbers of political prisoners as a sign of \u2018Seeking Peace,\u2019\u201d Trump wrote on\u00a0Truth Social<\/a>. \u201cThis is a very important and smart gesture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, 79, went on to say that Washington and Caracas are \u201cworking well together, especially as it pertains to rebuilding, in a much bigger, better, and more modern form, their oil and gas infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of this cooperation, I have cancelled the previously expected second Wave of Attacks, which looks like it will not be needed, however, all ships will stay in place for safety and security purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Trump\u00a0said Friday he had canceled a previously expected second wave of attacks on Venezuela. REUTERS<\/p>\n

The president also claimed at least $100 billion will be invested by \u201cBIG OIL\u201d in getting Venezuela\u2019s energy production up to speed.<\/p>\n

Trump is due to meet Friday afternoon with executives from companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips at the White House to make his case for why they should bet on Venezuela despite more than two decades of left-wing authoritarian leadership and ongoing instability and violence.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the president announced that Venezuela would sell up to 50 million barrels of oil to the US<\/a> at \u201cmarket price\u201d \u2014 and that he would control what the South American nation can do with the proceeds from the sale.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything we\u2019ve wanted, they\u2019ve given us,\u201d Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity Thursday night about his relations with the interim government, led by Maduro\u2019s former underling Delcy Rodriguez.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re taking billions and billions of dollars worth of oil, and it\u2019ll be hundreds of billions of dollars. It\u2019ll be trillions of dollars,\u201d the president predicted.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019re going to be there until we straighten out the country. We\u2019ll see how the country is doing. But we\u2019ll be running the oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women members of the Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana march in support of Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, after their capture by US forces on January 6, 2026. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Maduro, 63, and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured early Jan. 3 by members of the US Army\u2019s elite Delta Force and taken from their fortified compound in Caracas to New York to face federal drug trafficking and weapons charges.<\/a><\/p>\n

On Thursday, Venezuela announced multiple high-profile political prisoners, including opposition leaders, activists and journalists, were being released in a goodwill gesture to the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsider this a gesture by the Bolivarian (Venezuelan) government, which is broadly intended to seek peace,\u201d said Jorge Rodriguez, Delcy\u2019s brother and the head of Venezuela\u2019s National Assembly.<\/p>\n

Prisoner advocacy\u00a0group Foro Penal<\/a>\u00a0announced that opposition leader Biagio Pilieri and Enrique M\u00e1rquez, a former electoral authority and anti-Maduro candidate in the 2024 presidential election, were both released Thursday along with five Spanish citizens, including a Venezuelan-Spanish human rights lawyer.<\/p>\n

Smoke rises from explosions in Caracas, Venezuela, on January 3, 2026. via REUTERS<\/p>\n

The US Coast Guard boards a ghost fleet tanker in the North Atlantic Ocean. @Sec_Noem\/X<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, exiled Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado is expected to meet with Trump next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a very nice person,\u201d Trump told Hannity Thursday night. \u201cI understand she\u2019s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her and I\u2019ve heard that she wants to do that. That would be a great honor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has declined to support a possible Machado-run government, telling The Post on Sunday that he did not think she currently has enough support inside Venezuela<\/p>\n

Machado, was awarded\u00a0the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize<\/a>\u00a0in October for\u00a0her decades-long struggle against authoritarianism in her home country.<\/p>\n

She has since\u00a0signaled a willingness to personally give her prize to the president<\/a>, who received several public nominations for the award.<\/p>\n

With Post wires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump announced early Friday he was calling off an \u201cexpected second wave\u201d of attacks on Venezuela after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[153,9,11,10,21760,87,7318,1076],"class_list":{"0":"post-94754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-oil","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-venezuela","15":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}