JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Who is running Venezuela? President Trump keeps insisting he is in charge, though the U.S. has no troops or diplomats in Venezuela, and all of the top aides of the ousted president, Nicolas Maduro, remain in power. For the latest, NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre is here in the studio. Hi.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So Greg, is President Trump offering, like, any sign of what might come next in Venezuela?
MYRE: No, he really isn't. I mean, the president is clearly pleased with the military operation that seized Nicolas Maduro and his wife. He told Republican lawmakers today it was a complete success. He says the U.S. oil companies will modernize oil fields. He claims that drug trafficking will be greatly reduced. And he's even hinting about possible U.S. interventions in Mexico and Colombia.
The one thing Trump is not talking about is an election. He told NBC that Venezuela is in no position for elections in the near term, and he just hasn't offered any specifics on the road ahead in Venezuela. I spoke with Hal Brands at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and asked him what he thinks about this approach.
HAL BRANDS: I think the administration has a theory of success in Venezuela. I'm not sure it has a plan for success. If you are assuming that grabbing one guy and his wife is going to be sufficient to fundamentally transform the existing order in Venezuela, that may be a big ask.
SUMMERS: And Greg, to that point, Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, has been sworn in now as interim president. What has she had to say about her plans?
MYRE: Yeah, I mean, it was a really interesting scene at her swearing-in. She warmly embraced other foreign ambassadors there, but there was no U.S. ambassador because the U.S. doesn't have one in Venezuela. The U.S. shut down the embassy back in 2019. This was in Trump's first term when there was friction with the Maduro government. And this lack of a U.S. president (ph) creates a major obstacle to any U.S. effort to influence day-to-day events there. Now, Rodriguez has talked about cooperation with the U.S., but other top officials are denouncing the U.S. The Venezuelan attorney general said today the government and the military should stand united against what he called U.S. state terrorism.
SUMMERS: Any signs of opposition to what was and frankly, effectively still is the Maduro regime?
MYRE: Yeah, there's just no word on public rallies or protests against the government. That kind of activity would get you locked up under Maduro. And officials are threatening crackdowns if anyone expresses support for the U.S. operation. Also, the Trump administration has been pretty dismissive of the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado. She slipped out of the country last month to collect her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway and hasn't returned. She did give an interview to Fox News and said the Maduro holdovers in the government just can't be trusted. And she believes the opposition would win 90% of the vote in free elections. Now, there's no way to measure that claim, but an opposition candidate was considered the overwhelming winner in a 2024 presidential election according to international observers, and they say Maduro simply rigged the outcome and claimed victory and remained in power.
SUMMERS: Given the limited window that we do have into Venezuela, what potential signs should we be watching?
MYRE: Yeah. In a word, oil - the U.S. still maintains an embargo on oil tankers going in and out of Venezuela if they are on a U.S. sanctions list. U.S. Navy ships remain off the coast in the Caribbean to enforce this embargo. If they keep doing this, it will signal the Trump administration is not satisfied with this new Venezuelan government. Now, if oil is allowed to flow, that would suggest that the governments are in fact cooperating.
SUMMERS: NPR's Greg Myre, thank you.
MYRE: Sure thing, Juana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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