Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro transported to the US on the USS Iwo Jima [Truth Social photo].
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The Donroe Doctrine Takes Over Venezuela – Operation Absolute Resolve has removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their compound in Caracas and placed them in US custody on their way to the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi says she will issue a fresh indictment to Maduro – who was indicted in 2020 for narco-terrorism and other crimes – and Flores, The New York Times reports.
Meanwhile, the US is in charge. President Trump told a press conference at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, that the people behind him, meaning Secretary of State Marco Rubio and War Secretary Pete Hegseth, will run Venezuela as US oil companies rush back in to claim their facilities grabbed by Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez.
The Monroe Doctrine “is now considered the Donroe Doctrine,” Trump asserted.
Large US oil companies will go into Venezuela to take back the oil Chávez’s socialist regime took away, “considered the largest theft from our country in history,” Trump said.
Without offering pretty much any detail, Trump said Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who was sworn in as interim president Saturday morning, will not prevail. And it won’t be Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who has not been seen in her country since traveling last month to Oslo, Norway to collect her Nobel Peace Prize (the one Trump wanted). Machado “doesn’t have the respect” to run Venezuela, the president said.
Trump, Rubio and Hegseth, as well as Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who Trump and Hegseth constantly referred to as “Raisin’ Caine,” described an operation months in the making, bringing together all branches of the US Military along with law enforcement and the CIA (which scoped out Maduro’s every move to make for a clean arrest). US Military carried off Operation Absolute Resolve with no casualties and one aircraft hit but not damaged sufficiently to prevent it from returning to base.
Trump said his administration did not confer with members of Congress because congressmembers tend to “leak.”
And his administration is not going to give up any military dominance in Venezuela. Trump cited failed US intervention in Afghanistan and “the Jimmy Carter days,” referring to the Carter administration’s failed US Military rescue of American hostages in Iran in 1980.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Trump told the press conference. “We’re going to make sure that country is going to be run properly.”
How is this MAGA (Make America Great Again)? a reporter asked.
“We want to surround ourselves with good neighbors,” Trump replied. “We want to surround ourselves with security and we want to surround ourselves with energy.”
ICYMI, Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves in the world. Trump said America’s largest oil companies – not the US government – will spend a lot of money to update decrepit refinery facilities. –Todd Lassa
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this news item misidentified Venezuela's vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, who was sworn in as president Saturday.