After a complex and coordinated U.S. military operation resulted in the arrests of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, top officials from the Venezuelan regime adopted a defiant tone and asserted that the captured leader was still the nation’s one and only president.
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” Delcy Rodríguez, who has served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018 and is also Venezuela’s oil minister, said in remarks on state television on Jan. 3.
She demanded that the United States immediately release Maduro and his wife and called the arrests a violation of the United Nations charter.
Shortly after Rodríguez, the next in the line of succession, spoke on Saturday, Venezuela’s high court designated her as the interim president, and she was later sworn in.
Maduro is currently in a detention center in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, awaiting a court appearance on Monday over his indictment on drug charges.
Trump responded to the idea that María Corina Machado, a leading Venezuelan opposition figure and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, could potentially assume control of the country.
“It would be very tough for her to be the leader,” he said, adding that she lacks “respect within the country.”
Maduro Loyalists Declare Unity
In contrast to messaging from the White House, top officials in Maduro’s regime who are still in power after the U.S. military operation have said they are united behind their detained leader, and called the arrests of Maduro and his wife a kidnapping.“Here, the unity of the revolutionary force is more than guaranteed, and here there is only one president, whose name is Nicolás Maduro Moros. Let no one fall for the enemy’s provocations,” Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said in audio released by the nation’s PSUV socialist party on Jan. 4.
Venezuelan military officials also struck a defiant tone in video messages after the United States captured Maduro.
“They have attacked us but will not break us,” Defense Minister Gen. Vladimir Padrino López said while dressed in uniform.
Despite Cabello’s and Rodríguez’s public remarks emphasizing unity around Maduro in his absence, and the now-interim leader projecting defiance against the U.S. military after the arrests, Trump said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken to Rodríguez and that she said, “We'll do whatever you need.”
“I think she was quite gracious,” Trump said. “We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.”
Asked by CBS News on Sunday about his conversation with Rodríguez, Rubio did not reveal what the two discussed but emphasized that U.S. objectives toward Venezuela “have not changed.”
“We want drug trafficking to stop. We want no more gang members to come our way. We don’t want to see the Iranian and, by the way, Cuban presence [as] in the past,” Rubio said.
“We want the oil industry in that country not to go to the benefit of pirates and adversaries of the United States, but for the benefit of the people. We want to see all of that happen. We insist on seeing that happen.”
