President Trump told NBC in a Jan. 5 interview that the United States is not at war with Venezuela.
Nicolas Maduro has roots in Manhattan
USA TODAY’s Kathryn Palmer reports from Manhattan after Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro maintains his innocence after being detained by the U.S. military.
President Donald Trump said in a new interview that the United States could help finance improvements to Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, telling NBC that investments in oil companies could be “refunded.”
The president also said in a January 5 interview that the United States is not at war with Venezuela and there will be no early elections. He denied a Washington Post report that the reason he refused to support opposition leader Maria Colina Machado’s takeover was because she had won the Nobel Peace Prize, which she had coveted.
President Trump said of Machado, “She shouldn’t have won.” “But no, that has nothing to do with my decision.”
Early on January 3, the United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a military operation and took him to New York City on drug trafficking charges. Maduro pleaded not guilty in federal court on January 5. Delcy Rodriguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president, became interim president.
President Trump told NBC there will be no elections in Venezuela for the next 30 days.
“We have to rebuild the country first,” he said. “You can’t hold elections. People can’t even vote.”
The president named several members of his administration who were helping oversee the intervention in Venezuela, but when asked who was ultimately responsible, he answered, “Me.”
President Trump has focused on Venezuela’s oil resources following the U.S. military operation. He told NBC that the U.S. may repay U.S. oil companies for their investments and that it could take less than 18 months for Venezuela’s oil production to recover.
“We’re going to have to spend a lot of money, and the oil companies are going to spend it, and then it’s going to be reimbursed by us and through revenue,” Trump said.
Trump said oil companies were not briefed before the military operation took place, but his administration “has been talking about the concept of, ‘What if we do it?'”
“The oil companies knew perfectly well that we were thinking of doing something,” the president told NBC. “But we didn’t tell them we were going to do that.”
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on January 5th found that 72% of Americans are concerned about the US getting too involved in Venezuela. President Trump said the United States is not at war with any Latin American country.
“No, it’s not,” he told NBC. “We are at war with the people who sell drugs. We are at war with the people who empty our country of prisons and empty our country of drug addicts and mental hospitals.”
Contributor: Bert Jansen
