After U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — Donald Trump, oddly enough, suggested he’s comfortable with the word “kidnapped” — there was an obvious power vacuum in Caracas. The result has generated predictable and unsustainable uncertainty about the nation’s leadership.
There was some speculation that the administration might install opposition leader María Corina Machado, but the American president wasted little time in dismissing her, reportedly because she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize he wanted. Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s vice president, has succeeded Maduro — “she’s, I guess, the president,” Trump said on Saturday — but Edmundo González, who is widely regarded as the legitimate winner of Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, is apparently returning from exile and referring to himself as the country’s “commander in chief.”
Trump, however, has a very different kind of vision in mind when it comes to Venezuela’s leadership, at least in the short term.
On Sunday night, the American president spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One and was asked for his thoughts on the United States’ role in running the South American nation. The Republican initially responded that no one should ask who’s in charge of Venezuela “because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial.”
“What does that mean?” a reporter asked.
“It means we’re in charge,” Trump replied, offering the “very controversial” answer he said he didn’t want to offer seconds earlier.
The comments were striking for a variety of reasons, though they were hardly surprising. On Saturday morning, as many Americans were learning about the overnight developments, Trump appeared on Fox News and didn’t bother with any pretenses. “We can’t take a chance on letting somebody else run it,” he said.
Hours later, at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said over and over again that he and his administration would be “running” Venezuela. Pressed for details, the American president suggested “people in the military” would be involved, before concluding, “It’s largely going to be for a period of time, the people that are standing right behind me. We’re going to be running it.”
Standing behind him at the time were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
A day later, Rubio appeared on some Sunday shows and tried to clarify matters a bit, explaining that U.S. officials would not actually be responsible for governing Venezuela, but as the day ended, Trump’s “we’re in charge” line appeared to undercut the secretary of state’s on-air comments.
For the record, Venezuela’s population is roughly comparable to Texas’. In terms of its geographic footprint, the country is roughly the size of California, Wyoming and Oregon combined. Launching an attack and seizing a foreign head of state is difficult. Remaining “in charge” of such a country for an undetermined length of time is spectacularly more complex. What’s more, there’s little to suggest the White House has formulated any kind of plan, beyond winging it. As longtime journalist James Fallows summarized, “There is no evidence that anyone on the Trump team has thought about what will happen tomorrow, or next week, or next year, in the glow of their ‘success’ today.” On Saturday, a reporter reminded the American president that the U.S. “has something of a mixed record of ousting dictators without necessarily a plan for what comes after.” Trump quickly interrupted. “With me, that’s not true,” he said. “With me, we’ve had a perfect track record of winning. We win a lot, and we win.” Whether Trump realizes this or not, however, these circumstances are unique: He’s launched plenty of foreign strikes, but he hasn’t taken a foreign head of state, created a leadership vacuum and claimed control over a foreign nation — all without any kind of meaningful blueprint for the near future. His “perfect track record,” in other words, does not exist. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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