(AP)- Hours after an audacious U.S. military operation that plucked Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power and removed him from the country Saturday, his vice-president demanded Maduro’s release and called him the country’s rightful leader.
Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas. Maduro’s government accused the U.S. of attacking civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets.
Maduro and his wife, seized overnight from their home on a military base, were first taken aboard a U.S. warship before being flowing to New York City, where they will face prosecution for a Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.
Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez said some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed.
Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro, but Rodriguez made clear during a Saturday appearance on state television that she did not plan to assume power.
“There is only one president in Venezuela, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros,” she said.
Rodriguez’s comments come after Trump claimed she had been sworn in as president and had spoken with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which Trump claimed she said, “We’ll do whatever you need.”
“She is essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. Very simple,” Trump said of Rodriguez, who faced U.S. sanctions for her alleged role in undermining Venezuelan democracy during his first term.
However, state television has not broadcast any swearing-in ceremony and Rodríguez did not declare herself acting president or mention a political transition during her televised speech.
A ticker at the bottom of the screen identified her as the vice-president, and he gave no sign that she would be co-operating with the U.S.
“What is being done to Venezuela is an atrocity that violates international law,” she said.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said that the opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez should assume power, saying that he rightfully won the 2024 presidential election.
The Venezuelan constitution says a new election must be called within a month in the event of the president’s absence, but experts have been debating whether the succession scenario would apply here, given the government’s lack of popular legitimacy and the extraordinary U.S. military intervention.
‘We’re going to run the country,’ Trump says
Trump also claimed the U.S. government would help run the country and was already doing so, though there were no immediate signs of that. Venezuelan state TV continued to air pro-Maduro propaganda, broadcasting live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference where he boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”
The dramatic action capped an intensive pressure campaign by Trump and his administration on the South American country, and months of secret planning resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The legal authority for the operation was not immediately clear, though the Trump administration described it — and earlier deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea — as necessary to stem the flow of dangerous drugs. He also revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other nations.
