VENEZUELA will not be allowed to hold elections in the near future after ousted leader Nicolas Maduro was captured by US forces.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it would be “premature” for a new president to be announced so soon after the dramatic fall of Maduro.
Despite the clear directive from Trump’s top team, Maduro’s vice president has already staked her claim to be interim leader.
Hardline socialist Delcy Rodriguez, 56, was named by the Supreme Court of Venezuela as the new leader in Maduro’s absence.
Trump had even said on Saturday that he would prefer Rodriguez to be in power over Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
Machado recently pipped Trump to the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Trump even said that Rodriguez is willing to work with the US in order to “make Venezuela great again”.
The US president added that ultimately she “doesn’t really have a choice” as he claimed that his administration would actually control policy in Caracas for the time being.
Rodriguez, who had been Maduro’s VP for his past two terms, doesn’t appear to be on board with Trump’s plan as she openly blasted the Republican for carrying out an “atrocity”.
In the early hours of Saturday morning, the US military’s elite special mission unit carried out a bold operation to capture Maduro and his wife as they slept.
Commandos obliterated Venezuelan air defence systems as they raided Maduro’s fortified safe house in Caracas and flew him and his partner out of the country and across to New York.
The pair were hit with narco-terrorism and weapons-related charges – and will now face a criminal trial.
An angry Rodriguez said the extraction of her boss “violates international law“.
“That brutal use of force to bend the will of the people can be carried out against any country,” she added.
The Maduro loyalist later claimed on Saturday that she is ready to defend her country at all costs.
In a fierce response to Trump saying he will now oversee Caracas’ future, Rodriguez said: “Never again will we be slaves, never again will we be a colony of any empire.”
Despite her apparent refusal to see eye-to-eye Trump, Rubio has stated that she won’t be seen as the true leader by Washington.
He told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday: “Let’s be realistic here, what we are focused on right now is all of the problems we had when Maduro was there.
“We still have those problems in terms of them needing to be addressed.”
Rubio also confirmed that Washington would not take over administrative charge of Caracas but just control policy until a transition of power is made.
The talk of a new president in Venezuela comes less than 48 hours after the US managed to extract long-time target Maduro out of Caracas.
The dictator and his wife were dragged from their bedroom from inside a fortified military compound after being captured by the US special forces during a large-scale operation in Venezuela.
A blindfolded Maduro was pictured aboard the USS Iwo Jima – a huge aircraft carrier stationed in the Caribbean – as he was shipped off to New York.
Maduro was seen being led in custody by dozens of FBI agents before his scheduled court appearance at Manhattan federal court.
The first sighting of Cilia Flores, Maduro’s wife, has also come today with her seen being escorted through a Brooklyn building in a hooded jacket.
Prior to her marriage to Maduro, Flores was president of the National Assembly and one of the key power brokers in Venezuela.
From bus driver to captured president – who is Nicolas Maduro?
MADURO, 63, has been Venezuela’s president since 2013 when he took over from Hugo Chavez – widely considered to be his mentor.
Born in Caracas, the hard-left leader was a bus driver before he started his political career in Venezuela.
He became a trade union leader and then later served as Chavez’s foreign minister and vice president.
Maduro was narrowly elected president after Chavez died of cancer.
Unlike Chavez, a hugely popular leader during his reign, Maduro is far from a man of the people.
He is widely considered an authoritarian leader and is seen by many in the West as a tyrant.
He was in charge when Venezuela’s economy collapsed in the 2010s, has brutally cracked down on any protesters and is accused of election rigging.
The US claims both the 2018 and 2024 national elections should be voided due to the interference claims.
In recent years, tensions have ramped up between Maduro and America for several reasons, with drugs and migration being the main two.
In 2018, militants attempted to assassinate Maduro by sending explosives-laden drones over the top of a rally he was addressing on a Caracas avenue.
Trump has consistently described Maduro and his partner as illegitimate leaders and accused the president of operating as a narco-state.
Authorities estimate that as much as 250 tons of cocaine were trafficked through Venezuela by 2020, according to an indictment.
The US had spent months targeting drug vessels in the Caribbean which had come from Venezuela and were heading towards America.
After weeks of warning Maduro to surrender peacefully, Trump finally took matters into his own hands and captured his foe.
Maduro is expected to go in front of a judge in Brooklyn for the first time on Monday.
