Donald Trump warns Venezuelan rulers as Washington prepares to dictate policy

Donald Trump issued a stark warning to Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s de facto leader, that she must meet US demands as Washington signalled its intent to dictate policy in Caracas after Nicolás Maduro’s capture rather than physically govern the country.

“If they don’t behave, we will do a second strike,” Trump said late on Sunday as he returned to Washington from Florida. He added that Rodríguez was “co-operating”, but would “face a situation probably worse than Maduro” if she did not bow to Washington.

Trump’s comments followed a day of confusion about US intentions towards Venezuela in the aftermath of the operation that led to Maduro’s capture.

In a round of television interviews on Sunday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio suggested that Washington did not intend to occupy or administer Venezuela but would dictate policy to Caracas. He added that people had become “fixated” on Trump’s comment on Saturday that the US would “run” the country.

“It’s not running — it’s running policy, the policy with regards to this,” Rubio said.

But asked what he wanted to see from Rodríguez, who was granted acting presidential powers by Venezuela’s supreme court, Trump told reporters: “We need total access. We need access to the oil and to other things in their country that allow us to rebuild their country.”

Trump also doubled down on his claim that the US would “run” Venezuela, saying Washington was now “in charge” of the country. “We’re going to run it, fix it.”

Late on Sunday, Rodríguez issued a conciliatory statement on Instagram, saying Venezuela invited the US to “collaborate with us on an agenda of co-operation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law”.

Trump predicted that the US action against Venezuela would also lead to the collapse of the Cuban regime. Havana has long provided Caracas with counter-intelligence personnel and support, as well as doctors, in exchange for heavily discounted oil.

“I think it’s just going to fall. I don’t think we did any action. It looks like it’s going down. It’s going down for the count,” Trump said of Cuba.

Cuba confirmed in a statement late on Sunday that 32 of its soldiers were killed in the US operation, which it called a “criminal act of aggression and state terrorism”.

Trump also issued a threat to Colombia, saying a military operation there “sounds good”.

“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,” Trump told reporters, referring to Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

Rubio said the US was exercising control over Venezuela through its embargo on sanctioned oil exports, but all options remained on the table for Trump, who has not ruled out deploying US troops.

He insisted that Washington expected to see “changes” in Venezuela, including the oil industry being “run for the benefit of the people”, a halt to “drug trafficking” and “gang problems”, the removal of Colombian militant groups Farc and the ELN and that its rulers “no longer cosy up to Hizbollah and Iran in our own hemisphere”.

“We are going to judge whoever we’re interacting with moving forward by whether or not those conditions are met,” Rubio said.

Oil prices fell on Monday. Brent crude, the international benchmark, declined 1.1 per cent to $60.07 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark, dropped 0.9 per cent to $56.82 a barrel.

Trump has dismissed the idea of backing Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition figure and Nobel Peace Prize winner, as Venezuela’s next leader or Edmundo González, who is widely considered to have won the 2024 election.

“We’ll have elections at the right time,” Trump said on Sunday.

Rubio said he had “admiration” for Machado and González but said there had to be a “little realism” about the political transition.

“They’ve had this system of chavismo for 15 or 16 years, and everyone’s asking why 24 hours after Nicolás Maduro was arrested, there isn’t an election schedule for tomorrow,” Rubio said.

“Of course we want to see Venezuela transition . . . but obviously we don’t have the expectation that’s going to happen in the next 15 hours.”

Venezuelan defence minister Vladimir Padrino López said in a televised address that the armed forces had been activated nationwide following what he called “a brutal military assault on our sovereignty”.

The minister, flanked by top military brass, added that he recognised Rodríguez’s mandate to execute the “duties and faculties” of the presidency.

“If today [the attack] was against Venezuela, tomorrow it could be against any state, against any country — a colonialist ambition that seeks to be imposed through the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine over Latin America and the Caribbean,” Padrino López said.