The United States could oversee the political happenings in Venezuela for “much longer” than three months to a year, President Donald Trump said.
Trump made the comments in a two-hour interview with New York Times reporters, less than one week after the U.S. military staged an overnight operation to capture former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro on Saturday. An interim government, led by acting President Delcy Rodriguez, remains in place in Venezuela, but it is seemingly cooperating with the Trump administration.
When asked if the U.S. would politically oversee the South American country for three months, six months, a year, or longer, Trump said, “I would say much longer.”
Rodriguez, Maduro’s former vice president, has been cooperating with the Trump administration since taking her oath of office on Monday. She has inked an oil deal with Trump, under which her country will give up to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. The Trump administration will take the money from those market-rate oil sales, redistribute it to Venezuela, and Rodriguez’s administration will then use that money to purchase exclusively U.S.-made products, per the oil deal.
Trump said in the interview with the outlet that because of the deal, “we’re getting oil prices down.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined a three-step plan for the future of Venezuela’s government on Thursday, starting with “stabilization” under Rodríguez, followed by “recovery,” then a leadership transition.
Rubio said the recovery stage will be based on “ensuring that American, western, and other companies have access to the Venezuela market in a way that’s fair.”
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“At the same time, begin to create the process of reconciliation nationally within Venezuela so that the opposition forces can be amnestied and released from prisons or brought back to the country and begin to rebuild civil society,” Rubio said of the second, recovery phase.
Rubio did not elaborate on the transition stage in his initial comments.