{"id":391763,"date":"2026-01-06T20:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T20:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/391763\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T20:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T20:38:11","slug":"trump-says-u-s-is-not-at-war-after-maduro-pleads-not-guilty-in-u-s-federal-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/391763\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says U.S. is not at war after Maduro pleads not guilty in U.S. federal court"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump says Venezuela will not hold new elections in the next 30 days, suggesting the United States will be involved in the sovereign Latin American nation for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to fix the country first. You can\u2019t have an election. There\u2019s no way the people could even vote,” Trump told NBC News<\/a>. “No, it\u2019s going to take a period of time. We have \u2014 we have to nurse the country back to health.”<\/p>\n

The scope of America\u2019s involvement in Venezuela is unclear. The president said he has tasked a group of U.S. officials \u2014 including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller \u2014 to oversee the next steps.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s comments came hours after the deposed Venezuelan president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in a New York federal court. Maduro and Flores were captured at their home in a U.S. military operation over the weekend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As he left the courtroom, Maduro said, \u201cI am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, who was sworn in Monday as his successor, has been cooperating with the United States<\/a>, Trump said. But he warned that the U.S. could launch a second military incursion into Venezuela if she were to become uncooperative.<\/p>\n

Still, Trump insisted the United States is not at war with Venezuela. “No, we\u2019re not,” he said. “We\u2019re at war with people that sell drugs.” Trump also denied a report that he preferred Rodr\u00edguez to take the reins of Venezuela\u2019s transition over opposition leader Maria Corina Machado because Machado won this year\u2019s Nobel Peace Prize \u2014 an award he coveted. Machado said the removal of Maduro proved Trump deserved the prize.<\/p>\n

Live33 updates<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump says Venezuela will not hold new elections in the next 30 days, suggesting the United States…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,90848,44143,26028,643,76324,3,18231,1572,968,21,19,22,20,25,24,18232,55302],"class_list":["post-391763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-cilia-flores","tag-court-appearance","tag-foreseeable-future","tag-marco-rubio","tag-maria-corina-machado","tag-news","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-president-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-venezuela","tag-vice-president-jd-vance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}