Captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro arrives at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport Monday.Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump is signalling that he plans to leave Venezuela’s authoritarian regime in place so long as it takes orders from Washington, even as he threatened military action against Colombia, reiterated calls for the U.S. to annex Greenland and floated sending forces to Mexico to battle drug cartels.
The day after the U.S. captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and brought him to New York to stand trial, the country installed an interim president and top officials from the dictatorship asserted that they remained in charge in Caracas, while a sense of confusion clouded the South American country’s future.
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Meanwhile, concerns mounted globally about how far Mr. Trump planned to take his dramatic escalation of foreign interventionism.
“We’re in charge,” of Venezuela, Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One Sunday, as he returned to Washington from Florida. He said Delcy Rodríguez, Mr. Maduro’s vice-president who has assumed his powers, is “co-operating” with the U.S., but if that changed, “she will face a situation probably worse than Maduro.” He added that U.S. oil companies are “going to go in there.”
Protesters gather across the street from the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, where Nicolás Maduro his wife, Cilia Florez, are scheduled to be arraigned later on Monday.KARSTEN MORAN/The New York Times
The President framed the move as part of the U.S. returning to its historic Monroe Doctrine – or “Donroe Doctrine,” as he dubbed it – of hegemony over the Americas. And he suggested that he would not stop with Venezuela.
“Colombia is very sick, too, run by a sick man, who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States, and he’s not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a leftist who has frequently clashed with the U.S. President.
Asked if he was considering a military intervention in Colombia, Mr. Trump replied: “It sounds good to me.”
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Mr. Trump added that “you have to do something with Mexico” and its drug cartels, and that every time he talks to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, “I offer to send troops.”
He also repeated his demand that Greenland join the U.S., despite the self-governing Danish territory’s repeated rejections of his overtures. “We need Greenland from a national security situation,” Mr. Trump said, adding there were “Russian and Chinese ships” surrounding it and claiming that Denmark’s defences of the island consisted of a dogsled.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that a “transition to democracy” in Venezuela, and any role for its opposition leaders, would have to wait. For now, he told a series of U.S. Sunday television shows, Washington would work through Mr. Maduro’s subordinates.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, during which President Trump confirmed that the U.S. military carried out a large-scale strike in Caracas overnight, resulting in the capture of Maduro and his wife.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
“We are dealing with the immediate reality. The immediate reality is that, unfortunately, the vast majority of the opposition is no longer present inside of Venezuela,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “We have short-term things that have to be addressed right away.”
Mr. Rubio said Venezuela’s leaders would have to do the U.S.’s bidding, including by shutting down drug trafficking to the U.S., cutting ties with American adversaries such as Iran and ensuring that the U.S. benefits from Venezuela’s oil industry, which includes the world’s largest proven reserves. Among other methods, he said, the U.S. will continue to enforce an oil blockade on Venezuela to ensure compliance.
Mr. Rubio framed the military operation as Washington asserting control within its regional sphere of influence.
“This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live, and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors and rivals of the United States,” he said.
Women embrace as they look at a building that was heavily damaged by U.S. air strikes on Venezuela over the weekend.Gaby Oraa/Reuters
The U.S. captured Mr. Maduro in the early hours of Saturday, dispatching 150 aircraft to Caracas. Fighter jets and bombers carried out airstrikes on Venezuelan defences while low-flying helicopters fought their way into Mr. Maduro’s compound. The Venezuelan president and his wife, Cilia Flores, were flown to a warship that brought them to the U.S. to face drug-trafficking, terrorism and weapons charges.
Ms. Rodríguez, who was confirmed by her country’s top court as acting president in Mr. Maduro’s absence, decried the U.S. attack on Saturday and said Venezuela would not become “the colony of another empire.”
But Mr. Rubio dismissed her comments as political rhetoric. “What we are going to react to is very simple: What do you do? Not what you’re saying publicly,” he told ABC.
Supporters of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro gather near Miraflores Palace in Caracas on Sunday to demand the release of Maduro after he was captured by the U.S.THE NEW YORK TIMES/The New York Times
In Caracas, Mr. Maduro’s cabinet on Sunday asserted that they were still in power.
“Here, the unity of the revolutionary force is more than guaranteed,” Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, the head of the country’s repressive security forces who is also wanted on U.S. charges, said in an audio recording. “They only want our oil.”
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Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino went on state television to say that the U.S. attack killed a “large part” of Mr. Maduro’s guards “in cold blood.”
Mr. Maduro appeared briefly in a recorded perp walk at U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters in New York on Saturday evening. Handcuffed and wearing a black hoodie, hat and sweatpants, he greeted people in the room in both Spanish and English. “Happy New Year,” he said.
Venezuela's toppled leader Nicolas Maduro was in a New York detention centre on Sunday after President Donald Trump ordered an audacious raid to capture him, saying the U.S. would take control of the oil-producing nation.
Reuters
Major questions remained on the international precedent set by the attack and its legality, and the implications of Washington taking control of another country’s oil reserves.
Prime Minister Mark Carney on Sunday spoke with María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s main opposition leader, and said he supported restoring democracy in Venezuela.
“Prime Minister Carney affirmed Canada’s steadfast support for a peaceful, negotiated, and Venezuelan-led transition process that promotes stability and respects the democratic will of the Venezuelan people,” his office said in a summary of the call.
On Saturday, Mr. Carney reiterated that Canada has not recognized Mr. Maduro’s legitimacy as president since he rigged an election in 2018.
“In keeping with our long-standing commitment to upholding the rule of law, sovereignty and human rights, Canada calls on all parties to respect international law,” he wrote on X.
In a carefully worded statement, the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, called for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela and respect for international law.
“The EU recalls that, under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the UN Charter must be upheld. Members of the United Nations Security Council have a particular responsibility to uphold those principles, as a pillar of the international security architecture,” she said.
“Respecting the will of the Venezuelan people remains the only way for Venezuela to restore democracy and resolve the current crisis.”
The United Nations Security Council holds an emergency meeting on the U.S. military operation in Venezuela at UN headquarters, on Monday.DAVE SANDERS/The New York Times
The EU indicated that all of the bloc’s members aside from Hungary supported the statement.
Others criticized the U.S. invasion as a violation of the UN Charter, which prohibits countries from attacking each other’s territory.
“The Mexican government strongly condemns and rejects the military actions carried out unilaterally in recent hours by the armed forces of the United States of America,” the Mexican foreign ministry said in a statement.
Carney hails ouster of Maduro in Venezuela but calls for respect for international law
Mr. Trump has long signalled that he was ready to jettison his previous non-interventionist foreign policy, in which he criticized previous U.S. wars, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
After the 2024 election, he called for the annexations of Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone, and has also mused about launching military strikes in Mexico against drug cartels. Earlier this year, he took part in Israel’s war with Iran in order to bomb Tehran’s nuclear facilities, a move that generated unease among some of his isolationist political allies in the U.S.
In a November update to the U.S.’s national-security strategy, the Trump administration said it would make sure that other Western Hemisphere countries “co-operate” with the U.S.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Florida to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Sunday.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock criticized the attack on Venezuela as “reckless,” pointed out that Mr. Trump had once “promised to get us out of foreign wars” and cast doubt on the assertion that the President was seriously interested in shutting down drug trafficking.
Mr. Warnock cited the case of Juan Orlando Hernández, the conservative former president of Honduras who was pardoned by Mr. Trump last year after he was sentenced to 45 years in a U.S. prison on charges of cocaine trafficking.
“The recent attack on a sovereign nation in our own hemisphere is also without a good explanation. In fact, this huge escalation with no clear strategy risks bringing more violence and instability to a nation of 28 million people, potentially causing more drug trafficking and more migration to the United States,” Mr. Warnock said in a statement.
Some close to Mr. Trump pushed him to continue his bid for American international dominance. Katie Miller, a MAGA media personality and former administration official married to top White House adviser Stephen Miller, posted on X: “SOON” over a map of Greenland covered with the U.S. flag.
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Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called on the President to stop such threats, pointing out that Denmark is a NATO ally of the U.S. and is already working with Washington on Arctic security.
“The United States has no legal basis to annex one of the three countries of the Kingdom of Denmark,” she said in a statement.
“I therefore strongly urge the United States to cease its threats against a historically close ally, and against another country and another people who have stated very clearly that they are not for sale.”
Any hope that Venezuela would soon shift to political pluralism had already been put on ice, at least for now, by Mr. Trump on Saturday.
At his press conference, he seemed to dismiss a role for the Venezuelan opposition, saying Ms. Machado “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” Mr. Rubio on Sunday was more conciliatory, saying he had known Ms. Machado a long time and that she was “fantastic.”
In a statement, Ms. Machado, who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize after Mr. Trump openly campaigned for it to go to him, called for Edmundo González to be immediately installed as Venezuela’s president.
Mr. González ran in a 2024 election after Mr. Maduro barred Ms. Machado’s candidacy. Mr. González is generally believed to have won the vote before Mr. Maduro falsified the result to hold onto power.
“The freedom of all political prisoners is our immediate priority. I ask all heads of state and government and all democrats around the world to support us in this decisive hour,” she wrote on X.