President Donald Trump’s administration is working quickly to establish a pliant interim government in Venezuela following the dramatic capture of Nicolás Maduro, according to US officials, prioritizing administrative stability and repairing the country’s oil infrastructure over an immediate turn to democracy.

Officials described a multifold effort using American military and economic leverage to influence the remnants of Maduro’s regime left inside Venezuela. In particular, US officials have focused squarely on the country’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who Trump advisers identified weeks ago as a viable, if nonpermanent, alternative to Maduro. Despite Rodríguez’s initial attacks on the administration over Maduro’s capture, US officials privately maintained optimism she would work with the United States.

By Sunday night, Rodríguez was striking a softer tone than she previously had, calling for “cooperation” with the US. Rodríguez said Venezuela will “prioritize” moving toward “balanced and respectful international relations” with the US and the region.

Senior-level US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, top aide Stephen Miller and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have been working to develop a structure for Venezuela’s government in the wake of Maduro’s ouster, according to a senior US official. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright have been tasked with convincing American energy companies to return to Venezuela and its aging oil infrastructure.

The clearer picture that began emerging Sunday of what Trump meant when he claimed during an extraordinary news conference the United States would “run” Venezuela was essentially one in which the US relies on the massive armada floating offshore to ensure whoever is in charge does what the Trump administration wants.

Many questions remained about how, precisely, the US plans to establish what amounts to a temporary protectorate in a country of 31 million people that is roughly twice the size of California. There has been no official American presence in Venezuela since the US Embassy closed in Caracas in 2019.

And the risks for Trump appeared significant, even as he brushed off concerns he was repeating the mistakes of American adventurism abroad and threatened more military action if Rodríguez did not submit to his demands. Even his most immediate goal — gaining US access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves — could potentially put US troops in harm’s way if, as Trump suggested, they are deployed to protect those assets.

Speaking Sunday, Rubio — a chief architect of Trump’s Venezuela policy who the president said would be included in the group “running” the country — offered a broad portrait of what that meant.

“What we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward,” he said on ABC News. “And that is, we have leverage. This leverage we are using.”

That leverage, he said, includes the blockade of oil tankers intended to cut off Caracas’ main economic lifeline and the continued American military presence around Venezuela. An administration source also said the oil sanctions would remain in place for now.

“When the president said the United States is going to be running Venezuela, it means that the new leaders of Venezuela need to meet our demands,” including ceasing drugs and weapons trafficking, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton told CNN on Sunday morning.

“We want them to expel the Cubans and the Iranians and the Islamic radicals, and we want them to return to the civilized world and be a good neighbor that contributes to stability, order and prosperity,” the Arkansas Republican said.

Behind the scenes, US officials have zeroed in on Rodríguez, who they believed could provide a stable transition, offer a more professional relationship than Maduro — and, perhaps most importantly, ensure future American energy investments were protected.

Trump issued a threat against Rodríguez on Sunday, saying in an interview with The Atlantic, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

The administration appears to have written off the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Some advisers have warned Trump for months that Machado was not a guaranteed bet and was untested in power. One source told CNN that Trump was never fully sold on Machado, though there were early conversations discussing what the country might look like with her at the helm.

Despite Machado’s previous attempts to appeal to Trump, he claimed Saturday she lacked the “respect” needed to lead Venezuela. Instead, Trump said Rodríguez — a member of a regime the US previously said was illegitimate — would hold power in Caracas as long as she “does what we want,” vowing to launch a second round of strikes if she didn’t accede.

Later in the day, Rodríguez showed few signs of submission, declaring Maduro was still the head of state and describing the US operation to capture him as “barbarity.”

American officials viewed the comments as targeted toward an internal audience, and appeared nonplussed that she appeared to be publicly rebuffing Trump’s claims that she was now in charge.

In her Sunday night comments, Rodríguez spoke directly to the US president, writing, “President Donald Trump: our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war. This has always been President Nicolás Maduro’s message, and it is a message of all Venezuela right now.”

On Sunday, Rubio said the US would judge Rodríguez on what she does moving forward, rather than her past statements.

“We’re going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly in the interim, not what we know what they’ve done in the past in many cases, but what they do moving forward,” he said.

Rubio declined to provide details about his conversations with Rodríguez, but told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “we expect to see more compliance and cooperation than we were previously receiving.”

Two former senior State Department officials said Saturday that Rodríguez would likely only have made or would make a deal with the Trump administration if it offered protection for leadership.

“For Delcy, she’s not going to put her head on the block and say, ‘Hack away,’” said one former official who knows her. “Any deal that’s going to be done has to be done in a way that is going to offer some degree of protection to the leadership.” This official described Rodríguez as a “very committed leftist,” and told CNN they do not think the officials who committed their lives to the cause would so easily give it up to become “lackeys.”

“I would think that they’re going to ask for a lot of guarantees,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Todd Robinson, who served as acting US ambassador to Venezuela during Trump’s first term, said Rodríguez may agree to a deal with the administration on “the hope that she can stay and somehow stay in charge of the political apparatus that is there.” If she is not able to stay in power, Robinson said, she may agree a deal if it allows her “to leave under her own auspices with whatever they’ve socked away in whatever bank accounts they have outside of Venezuela.”

“I think we’ll see whether the vice president of Venezuela, who is sanctioned by the United States and many other countries, who was in league and hand-chosen by Maduro, wants to turn over a new leaf,” Cotton said.

Unmentioned, at least by Trump this weekend, was whether he sought a return to democracy in Venezuela, which for years has been run by authoritarians. Rubio on Sunday said the US wants to see a democratic transition in Venezuela, but argued the administration “needs to deal with the immediately reality.” He said discussing a potential timeline for elections in Venezuela was “premature.”

“We have short-term things that have to be addressed right away. We all wish to see a bright future for Venezuela, transition to democracy,” he said on NBC. (CNN)

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