President Trump on Sunday threatened that Venezuela’s new acting president, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, would have a fate worse than Nicolas Maduro’s if she doesn’t do the bidding of the US.
“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told The Atlantic a day after his military abducted Maduro from the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and flew him to New York, where he is now in a jail cell in Brooklyn.
Trump claimed on Saturday that Rodriguez was willing to work with the US and outlined his plan to “run” Venezuela to ensure US companies get access to the country’s oil. But later in the day, Rodriguez strongly denounced the US attack on her country, calling it “an atrocity that violates international law” and vowing that Venezuela “will never again be a colony of any empire.”
The Venezuelan military has also struck a defiant tone after the US attack, with Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez calling it a “cowardly kidnapping” that occurred “after cold-bloodedly assassinating a large part of the president’s security detail, soldiers, and innocent civilians.”
During his press conference on Saturday, Trump threatened that he’d be willing to launch a “second wave” of attacks on Venezuela if he deems it necessary.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a key driver of the US attack on Venezuela, said that he would wait to see what Rodriguez does. “We’re going to make decisions based on their actions and their deeds in the days and weeks to come,” he told The New York Times.
The Times also reported that several weeks ago, the US had settled on Rodriguez as an acceptable candidate to replace Maduro, at least temporarily, despite her being a long-time ally of the Venezuelan leader. The report said the US was pushing for Maduro to voluntarily flee to Turkey before launching the attack, which killed at least 80 people, including military personnel and civilians.
One of the motives for the US taking military action to kidnap Maduro was the Venezuelan leader’s public dancing and calls for peace with the US, as Trump officials took his behavior as mocking the US threat, according to the Times report.
For now, Trump has declined to back Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader who just won the Nobel Peace Prize and was very supportive of the US president’s attack on her country. Trump said that Machado didn’t have enough “respect” inside Venezuela.
