CARACAS, Venezuela — Hours after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a large‑scale military operation, President Donald Trump said the United States would “run the country” until a “safe, proper, and judicious transition” can take place. The comments immediately triggered a global debate over who should govern Venezuela during the power vacuum left by Maduro’s removal.
Trump said Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez had been sworn in as interim president.The president said that “we’ve spoken to her [Rodriguez] numerous times, and she understands, she understands.” However, Rodríguez, speaking live on television Saturday, condemned the U.S. attack and demanded "the immediate release of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. The only president of Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro."
With Maduro detained and flown to the United States to face federal charges, Venezuela now confronts a constitutional crisis, competing claims to authority, and intense international scrutiny.
Under Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution, the vice president assumes power when the presidency is vacated. That makes Rodríguez, Maduro’s longtime deputy, the constitutional successor.
Rodríguez has served as vice president since 2018 and has been central to Maduro’s political apparatus. State media reported she was coordinating emergency communications after the U.S. operation, though independent confirmation remains limited.
Analysts warn that Venezuela’s military high command may assert control during the crisis. Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López has vowed that Venezuela will “prevail” and “not negotiate” with the United States.
Several opposition leaders—long sidelined under Maduro—are now being discussed as potential successors.
Some analysts view Nobel Peace Prize recipient and prominent opposition figure María Corina Machado as a leading contender. Experts told Fox News she and ally Edmundo González have broad public support.
Recognized by the United States as the legitimate winner of Venezuela’s disputed 2024 election, Edmundo González is also considered a viable transitional leader.
Opposition groups argue that a civilian‑led transition is essential to restoring democratic institutions.
President Trump has said the United States will be “very involved” in determining Venezuela’s next leader, arguing that Washington cannot allow “somebody else” to take over and recreate the conditions that existed under Maduro.
Trump’s assertions that the United States will “run the country,” maintain a “partnership” with Venezuela’s oil industry during the transition, and keep American forces positioned for additional action have intensified concerns about U.S. overreach and the legality of unilateral intervention.
Governments across Latin America have expressed alarm at the prospect of U.S. administration of Venezuela.
“The Colombian government rejects the aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America,” Petro said, urging an immediate meeting of the United Nations Security Council, where Colombia currently holds a seat.
In Chile, outgoing President Gabriel Boric also condemned the attack. But President‑elect José Antonio Kast — who campaigned on promises to crack down on migration and crime — struck a sharply different tone. In a post on X, he called Maduro’s arrest “great news for the region.”
“Now begins a greater task. The governments of Latin America must ensure that the entire apparatus of the regime abandons power and is held accountable,” said Kast, who will be sworn in on March 11.
Venezuelan officials have condemned the U.S. operation as a “grave military aggression” and accused Washington of violating international law.
Venezuela faces a volatile and uncertain period. With Maduro detained abroad, competing factions—constitutional, military, opposition, and foreign—are now vying to shape the country’s future.
What remains clear is that the question of who should run Venezuela is no longer merely a domestic matter. It is now a geopolitical struggle with global implications.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.