CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelans on Saturday scrambled to understand who was in charge of their country after the U.S. military captured President Nicolás Maduro, ousting the strongman who had outlasted a botched coup attempt, several army mutinies, mass protests and economic sanctions in the vast nation of 29 million.
“What will happen tomorrow?” asked Juan Pablo Petrone, a resident of Venezuela's capital of Caracas. As fear gripped the city, streets quickly emptied save for long lines snaking from supermarkets and gas stations. “What will happen in the next hour?”
President Donald Trump offered a shocking answer: The United States would take control of Venezuela, perhaps in coordination with one of Maduro's most trusted aides.
Delcy Rodríguez, who is next in the presidential line of succession, served as Maduro's vice president since 2018, overseeing much of Venezuela's oil-dependent economy as well as its feared intelligence service. On Saturday, Venezuela's high court ordered her to assume the role of interim president.
“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump told reporters of Rodríguez, who faced U.S. sanctions during Trump’s first administration for her role in undermining Venezuelan democracy.
In a major snub, Trump said opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded last year's Nobel Peace Prize, didn't have the support to run the country.
Trump said Rodríguez had a long conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which Trump claimed she said, “‘We’ll do whatever you need.’”
“I think she was quite gracious,” Trump added. “We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.”
Senior officials remain in place
Key Venezuelan officials appeared to have survived the military operation and held onto their jobs, at least for now. There was no immediate sign that the U.S. was running Venezuela.
Rodríguez tried to project strength and unity among the ruling party’s many factions, downplaying any hint of betrayal. In remarks on state television before the court decision, she demanded the immediate release of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and denounced the U.S. operation as a flagrant violation of the United Nations charter.
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” Rodríguez said, surrounded by top civilian officials and military commanders.
Seeking to assuage the jittery public, Venezuelan military officials struck a defiant tone in video messages, lashing out at Trump and vowing to stand up to U.S. pressure.
“They have attacked us but will not break us,” said Defense Minister Gen. Vladimir Padrino López, dressed in fatigues.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, among Maduro's top enforcers, urged Venezuelans to “get out on the streets” to defend the country’s sovereignty.
“These rats attacked and they will regret what they did,” he said of the U.S.
Some Venezuelans heeded his call, rallying in support of the government and burning American flags in scattered gatherings across Caracas on Saturday.
But most people stayed inside out of fear.
“What's happening is unprecedented,” said Yanire Lucas, another Caracas resident, picking up pieces of glass from an explosion at a nearby military base that blew out the windows of her house.
“We’re still on edge, and now we’re unsure what to do.”
No sign of a political transition
Trump indicated that Rodríguez had been sworn in already as president of Venezuela, per the transfer of power outlined in the constitution.
But state TV did not broadcast any swearing-in ceremony.
During Rodríguez's televised speech, a ticker at the bottom of the screen identified her as the vice president. She gave no sign that she would be cooperating with the U.S., and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“What is being done to Venezuela is an atrocity that violates international law,” she said in her address. “History and justice will make the extremists who promoted this armed aggression pay.”
The Venezuelan constitution also 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.
Strong ties with Wall Street
A lawyer educated in Britain and France, Rodríguez has a long history of representing the revolution started by the late Hugo Chávez on the world stage.
She and her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Maduro-controlled National Assembly, have sterling leftist credentials born from tragedy. Their father was a socialist leader who died in police custody in the 1970s, a crime that shook many activists of the era, including a young Maduro.
Unlike many in Maduro’s inner circle, the Rodríguez siblings have avoided criminal indictment in the U.S.
Delcy Rodríguez developed strong ties with Republicans in the oil industry and on Wall Street who balked at the notion of U.S.-led regime change.
Among her past interlocutors were Blackwater founder Erik Prince and, more recently, Richard Grenell, a Trump special envoy who tried to negotiate a deal with Maduro for greater U.S. influence in Venezuela.
Internal tensions could erupt
Fluent in English, Rodríguez is sometimes portrayed as a well-educated, market-friendly moderate in contrast to the military hard-liners who took up arms with Chávez against Venezuela's democratically elected president in the 1990s.
Many of them, especially Cabello, are wanted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges and stand accused of serious human rights abuses. But they continue to hold sway over the armed forces, the traditional arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela.
That presents major challenges to Rodríguez asserting authority. But some analysts said they expected Venezuela’s power brokers to close ranks, as they've done before.
“These leaders have all seen the value of staying united. Cabello has always taken a second seat or third seat, knowing that his fate is tied up with Maduro’s, and now he very well might do that again,” said David Smilde, a sociology professor at Tulane University who has studied Venezuela's political dynamics over the past three decades.
Much depends on the state of Venezuela's military after the U.S. bombing raid, Smilde added. “If it doesn’t have much firepower anymore, they’re more vulnerable and diminished.”
An snub of the opposition
Shortly before Trump's press conference, Machado, the opposition leader, called on her ally Edmundo González — a retired diplomat widely considered to have won the country's disputed 2024 presidential election — to "immediately assume his constitutional mandate and be recognized as commander-in-chief."
In a triumphant statement, Machado promised that her movement would "restore order, free political prisoners, build an exceptional country and bring our children back home."
She added: “Today we are prepared to assert our mandate and take power."
Trump seemed to throw cold water on those plans.
Asked about Machado, Trump was blunt: “I think it would be very tough for (Machado) to be the leader," he said, shocking many Venezuelan viewers who expected Trump's talk of liberation to mean a swift democratic transition.
“She doesn’t have the support or respect within the country.”
Machado has not responded to Trump's remarks.
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Associated Press reporter Joshua Goodman contributed to this report from Miami. DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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