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The White House said that the Trump administration is working in tandem with interim Venezuelan authorities and has made it clear that U.S. dominance will prevail after the toppling of dictator Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the U.S. had conducted strikes in Caracas, Venezuela, captured Maduro, and that the U.S. would run the country until a safe transition could occur. Currently, Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, is serving as interim president.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other members of the president’s national security team are working in “close coordination with the interim authorities, and their decisions are going to continue to be dictated by the United States of America.”
Nicolas Maduro is seen in handcuffs after landing at a Manhattan helipad, escorted by heavily armed Federal agents as they make their way into an armored car en route to a Federal courthouse in Manhattan on Jan. 5, 2026, in New York City. (XNY/Star Max/GC Images via Getty Images)
“We obviously have maximum leverage over the interim authorities in Venezuela right now. And the president has made it very clear that this is a country … close by the United States that is no longer going to be sending illegal drugs to the United States of America. It’s no longer going to be sending and trafficking illegal people and criminal cartels to kill American citizens, as they have in the past. And the president is fully deploying his peace through strength foreign policy agenda.”
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“The administration has made it quite clear to the interim authorities in Venezuela that this is the Western Hemisphere, and American dominance is going to continue under this president,” Leavitt said.
Trump announced Tuesday that Venezuela’s interim government would hand over up to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S., and that the oil would be sold “immediately.”
Rubio told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. has the upper hand right now in Venezuela, due to a “quarantine” on sanctioned oil from Venezuela.
“They are not generating any revenue from their oil right now,” Rubio told reporters Wednesday. “They can’t move it unless we allow it to move because we have sanctions, because we’re enforcing those sanctions. This is tremendous leverage. We are exercising it in a positive way.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. seized two sanctioned tankers in the Atlantic Ocean Wednesday.
Trump announced Saturday that U.S. special forces conducted a strike against Caracas, Venezuela, and seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The two were taken to New York and appeared in a Manhattan federal court Monday on drug charges. Both pleaded not guilty.
In addition to running Venezuela, Trump said the U.S. was “ready to stage a second and much larger attack” if needed in Venezuela.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the U.S. has the upper hand right now in Venezuela, due to a “quarantine” on sanctioned oil from Venezuela. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
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The effort came after months of pressure on Venezuela as the Trump administration conducted more than 20 strikes in Latin American waters targeting alleged drug traffickers as part of Trump’s broader initiative to curb the influx of drugs into the U.S.
Even so, the Trump administration repeatedly stated that it did not recognize Maduro as a legitimate head of state and insisted he was the leader of a drug cartel. Trump also said in December 2025 he thought it would be “smart” for Maduro to step down.
The Trump administration has claimed that its actions seizing Maduro were justified as a “law enforcement” operation, and Rubio said Congressional approval wasn’t necessary since the operation didn’t amount to an “invasion.”
“This has been a profound constitutional failure,” the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a statement. (Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)
But lawmakers, primarily Democrats, have questioned the legality of the operation in Venezuela, which was conducted without Congress’ approval.
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“This has been a profound constitutional failure,” the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said in a statement Saturday. “Congress — not the President — has the sole power to authorize war. Pursuing regime change without the consent of the American people is a reckless overreach and an abuse of power.
“The question now is not whether Maduro deserved removal — it is what precedent the United States has just set, and what comes next.”
