United States President Donald Trump’s administration has confirmed plans to write terms to Venezuela’s interim government following the kidnapping of leader Nicolas Maduro over the weekend.
On Wednesday, Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt addressed the US attack on Venezuela for the first time in a news briefing and faced questions about the extent of Trump’s role in the South American country’s affairs.
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“We are coordinating closely with the interim authorities,” Leavitt responded. “Their decisions will be decided by the United States of America.”
Vice President JD Vance also weighed in on the programme Appearance On Fox News, it is said that the US will apply economic pressure to ensure compliance with Trump’s priorities.
“People always ask: How do you control Venezuela? And we’re actually seeing that play out in real time,” Vance said.
“The way we control Venezuela is we control the purse strings, we control the energy resources, and we tell the regime, ‘You’re allowed to sell oil as long as you’re serving America’s interests.'”
But the question of who is in charge in Venezuela remains volatile.
Before dawn Saturday, the Trump administration launched a military offensive in Venezuela to capture and remove President Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, describing the couple’s kidnapping as a law enforcement operation.
Maduro and Flores have since been taken to New York City, where they are accused of shipping “tons of cocaine into the United States.”
In the hours immediately following the attack, it was unclear whether the Trump administration would seek to oust the remnants of the Maduro government.
Trump held a press conference from his residence in Palm Beach, Florida and claimed that the country was under US control.
“We’re going to run the country until we can have a safe, fair and just transition,” Trump said from his Mar-a-Lago resort.
“We don’t want to get somebody else involved, and that’s what we’ve been in for years. So we’re going to run the country.”
Rodriguez maintains ‘no foreign agents’ in charge
Since then, however, the Trump administration has indicated that it would prioritize stability in Venezuela over quickly installing a new leadership. It has refused to set a timeline for fresh elections.
“It’s too premature and too early to schedule elections in Venezuela right now,” Levitt said Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Delsey Rodriguez, Maduro’s former vice president, was officially sworn in as Venezuela’s interim leader, and the Trump administration has indicated it will work with him as he pursues the extraction and sale of Venezuelan oil.
Still, Rodriguez’s government and the Trump administration have described their relationship in very different terms.
According to the Trump White House, Rodriguez is responsive to US demands. “If she doesn’t do the right thing, she’s going to pay a very big price, maybe even bigger than Maduro,” Trump told The Atlantic magazine on Sunday.
On Wednesday, Levitt echoed that position, saying the US would influence Venezuela’s decisions.
“We have more and more leverage over the interim authorities in Venezuela,” she said.
Already, Tuesday night Post On Truth Social, Trump announced that Venezuela would surrender 30 to 50 million barrels of oil, so the US could sell it on the international market.
“That money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure that it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States,” Trump wrote.
Meanwhile, the Rodriguez government has repeatedly denied that the US is puppeteering its decisions.
Although Rodriguez has at times taken a conciliatory stance toward the Trump administration, she rejects the idea that foreign powers are running the country.
“We are governing here with the people,” Rodriguez said in remarks broadcast on state television.
“The Venezuelan government is in charge of our country, and no one else. There is no foreign agent ruling Venezuela.”
Continuation of Maduro-era policies?
Like Maduro before her, Rodríguez is part of the political movement known as “Chavismo” founded by the late socialist president Hugo Chavez.
As a “Chavista”, Rodríguez has spoken out against US imperialism in Latin America, and she recently condemned the kidnapping of Maduro – Chávez’s handpicked successor – and his wife as an involuntary “kidnapping” and a “brutal attack”.
Chávez is seen as a key figure in the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil, expanding state control over the country’s rich petroleum reserves during his tenure as president.
Trump and his officials have called such efforts, including the 2007 seizure of foreign oil assets, an act of theft against the United States.
Still, the Trump administration has described Rodriguez’s administration as cooperative so far.
It remains to be seen whether the behind-the-scenes demands — including reports that Trump has asked Rodriguez to cut ties with key allies Russia, China, Cuba and Iran — will lead to public dissent.
“The president has made it very clear that this is a country in the Western Hemisphere, close to the United States, that will no longer ship illegal drugs to the United States of America,” Leavitt said.
“The President is fully deploying his ‘peace through strength’ foreign policy agenda.”
Meanwhile, the Rodriguez government continues Maduro’s campaign to suppress internal dissent, according to human rights watchdogs.
As part of the emergency declaration, the interim president authorized Venezuelan law enforcement to detain those who supported Maduro’s kidnapping.
The nonprofit Foro Penal reported that on January 5, in the wake of the US attacks, Venezuelan authorities arrested 14 journalists, all of whom were eventually released. One was deported.
Another human rights group, Kaleidoscope Humano, announced that two elderly men in Merida state had been arrested for celebrating Maduro’s capture by firing guns into the air.
The international community has long condemned human rights violations in Venezuela. But the US has also faced widespread criticism for its crackdown on Maduro, which has been condemned as a violation of sovereignty.
On Wednesday, a group of United Nations experts Dr warned That Trump’s actions constitute an “international crime of aggression.”
“These actions represent a serious, flagrant and deliberate violation of the most fundamental principles of international law, set a dangerous precedent and threaten to destabilize the entire region and the world,” he wrote.