President Donald Trump told Right Side Broadcasting Network’s Alec Lace that the United States now controls Venezuela, saying, “Now we control it. Now we have it. We took it in a war,” in the Nov. 1 interview in Dubuque, Iowa.
In the same answer, Trump said Venezuela “was a very successful country. Then it tried it 15 years ago, and it was destroyed.” He said, “Nobody wants to talk about that,” and then moved on to Iran and Greenland.
On Jan. 3, Trump announced that U.S. forces had captured Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores in Caracas. In a transcript of his Palm Beach news conference published in the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents, Trump said that “overwhelming American military power—air, land, and sea” was used and that the couple “now face American justice.” He also said, “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. J. Daniel Caine described the operation, which he called Operation Absolute Resolve, as involving more than 150 aircraft and an extraction force that took the pair aboard the USS Iwo Jima, with “no loss of U.S. life.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. had not recognized Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate president under three administrations and that Maduro had been offered “multiple very, very, very generous” opportunities to avoid the raid.
Venezuela’s government rejected the account. From Miraflores Palace, Executive Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said U.S. forces had carried out “an aggression” and that Maduro and Flores had been “secuestrado,” or kidnapped, according to the Venezuelan presidential press office. She said the operation aimed at regime change and control of the country’s energy and mineral resources, and she called for the immediate release of the president.
Rodríguez later rejected the idea that Washington was running Caracas. “I am in charge of the presidency of Venezuela, as it’s stated clearly in the constitution of Venezuela,” she told NBC News in February, according to Anadolu Agency. Anadolu also reported that she called Maduro the legitimate leader.
Trump’s Nov. 1 statement that the United States “now control[s]” Venezuela stands apart from the January account, in which he said the U.S. would run the country during a transition. The two accounts are the public record on the question of U.S. control.