CNN
By Kevin Liptak, Kristen Holmes, Jennifer Hansler, CNN
West Palm Beach, Florida (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s administration is working quickly to establish a pliant interim government in Venezuela following the dramatic capture of Nicolás Maduro, according to US officials, prioritizing administrative stability and repairing the country’s oil infrastructure over an immediate turn to democracy.
Officials described a multifold effort using American military and economic leverage to influence the remnants of Maduro’s regime left inside Venezuela. In particular, US officials have focused squarely on the country’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who Trump advisers identified weeks ago as a viable, if nonpermanent, alternative to Maduro.
Senior-level US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, top aide Stephen Miller and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have been working to develop a structure for Venezuela’s government in the wake of Maduro’s ouster, according to a senior US official. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright have been tasked with convincing American energy companies to return to Venezuela and its aging oil infrastructure.
The clearer picture that began emerging Sunday of what Trump meant when he claimed during an extraordinary news conference the United States would “run” Venezuela was essentially one in which the US relies on the massive armada floating offshore to ensure whoever is in charge does what the Trump administration wants.
Many questions remained about how, precisely, the US plans to establish what amounts to a temporary protectorate in a country of 31 million people that is roughly twice the size of California. There has been no official American presence in Venezuela since the US Embassy closed in Caracas in 2019.
And the risks for Trump appeared significant, even as he brushed off concerns he was repeating the mistakes of American adventurism abroad and threatened more military action if Rodríguez did not submit to his demands. Even his most immediate goal — gaining US access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves — could potentially put US troops in harm’s way if, as Trump suggested, they are deployed to protect those assets.
Speaking Sunday, Rubio — a chief architect of Trump’s Venezuela policy who the president said would be included in the group “running” the country — offered a broad portrait of what that meant.
“What we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward,” he said on ABC News. “And that is, we have leverage. This leverage we are using.”
That leverage, he said, includes the blockade of oil tankers intended to cut off Caracas’ main economic lifeline and the continued American milita