Delcy Rodriguez Named Venezuela's Interim President Even As Trump Assumes US Control

Venezuela's Supreme Court has directed Vice President Delcy Rodriguez to take charge as the Interim President, a day after the US attacked the South American nation and "captured" President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.

However, the announcement comes after US President Donald Trump claimed on Saturday that 'US would run' Venezuela until a transition could be organised. Trump said the US administration of Venezuela would include deploying US oil companies to the country.

The Constitutional Chamber of Venezuela's Supreme Court ordered that Vice President Delcy Rodríguez assume the role of acting president of the country in the absence of Nicolás Maduro. The President was detained early Saturday morning in an operation by US forces.

The court ruling said that Rodríguez would assume "the office of President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in order to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defense of the Nation."

The ruling added that the court will debate the matter in order to "determine the applicable legal framework to guarantee the continuity of the State, the administration of government, and the defense of sovereignty in the face of the forced absence of the President of the Republic."

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”

Maduro and his wife landed via ship to New York . They will face an indictment on alleged drug trafficking, weapons and conspiracy charges, the US president said. Analysts see the attack as Trump’s willingness in his second term to deploy US military power to achieve his foreign policy aims. Venezuela is a nation with vast oil reserves.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said.

“We want to do liberty for the people we want to, you know, have a great relationship,” he added. Trump urged supporters of Maduro still in the country to shift their allegiances, saying “if they stay loyal, the future’s really bad for them.”

However, the US President also demurred when asked if he would back opposition leader María Corina Machado, who is in an unknown location, to run the country, saying “we’re going to have to look at it.”

Machado on X said the Venezuelan opposition was ready to assume power, calling for Edmundo Gonzalez — her stand-in candidate in recent elections — to take office and urging the armed forces to recognize him.