‘We will run the country’: Trump after Venezuela regime change (Live Updates)
Published 10 hours ago
Source: rt.com
The Venezuelan president and his wife are being delivered to New York to face “narco-terrorism” charges, Washington has said
The US will “run” Venezuela after carrying out a regime-change operation in the oil-rich South American country, President Donald Trump has said.
Trump was speaking at a press conference after US forces swooped over the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, early on Saturday. Maduro and his wife were captured by US special forces in the operation and renditioned on an American warship, where the Venezuelan leader is being held blindfolded and handcuffed.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” Trump told the media from his Mar-a-Lago resort. “We’re there now… we’re going to stay until such time as a proper transition can take place.”
“We’re going to have our very large US 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 and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so. So we were prepared to do a second wave,” Trump added.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello Rondon has told the country’s troops to “trust the leadership,” while Foreign Minister Yvan Gil has accused Washington of seeking to gain control of the Latin American nation’s natural resources.
Numerous videos have emerged of a series of heavy explosions across Caracas. Footage showing attacks in two other parts of the country has also been geolocated. One clip features the outline of several US Chinook military helicopters swooping across the city at low altitude.
In a statement, Moscow has condemned the US “aggression,” called for “immediate clarification” on Maduro’s whereabouts and lamented that “ideological hostility has triumphed over businesslike pragmatism.”
American Senator Mike Lee announced on his personal X account that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had told him that Washington does not foresee any further military operations at this time and that the Venezuelan president will stand trial in the US.
Multiple Western countries have expressed “concern” and claimed they are monitoring developments with their diplomatic teams in the Venezuelan capital.
