Trump warns interim Venezuelan leader of ‘bigger price’ after US seizure of Maduro: LIVE UPDATES
Published 1 day ago
Source: rt.com
Acting President Delcy Rodriguez has vowed to defend the country’s natural resources from plunder
President Donald Trump has threatened Venezuela's interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, with a “bigger price” than the one paid by her recently captured predecessor Nicolas Maduro.
In the early hours of Saturday, American forces swooped over the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and captured Maduro and his wife and took them back to the US, where they will soon face charges of orchestrating a “narco-terrorism conspiracy.”
In Maduro’s absence, Venezuela’s Supreme Court has granted Rodriguez, who served as vice president, presidential powers and ordered her to immediately assume office in an acting capacity.
However, “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 in a phone interview on Sunday.
In the meantime, the US will “run” Venezuela after carrying out a regime-change operation in the oil-rich South American country, Trump said on Saturday.
“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.
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.”
