President Donald Trump said the U.S. is now in control of Venezuela following the arrest of longtime leader Nicolás Maduro, outlining a plan to run the country, rebuild its economy and delay elections until what he described as a recovery is underway.

Trump made the remarks during a gaggle with reporters as questions mounted about who is governing Venezuela after a U.S. military operation led to Maduro’s arrest early Saturday.

“Don’t ask me who’s in charge because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial,” Trump told a reporter.

He was then asked to clarify, to which Trump replied, “It means we’re in charge.”

US CAPTURE OF MADURO CHAMPIONED, CONDEMNED ACROSS WORLD STAGE AFTER SURGICAL VENEZUELA STRIKES

Trump was also asked whether he had spoken directly with Venezuela’s newly sworn-in Vice President Delcy Rodríguez amid uncertainty about how the new government is functioning and what role the U.S. is playing.

While Trump said he has not personally spoken with Rodríguez, he suggested coordination is already underway between U.S. officials and the new leadership.

During the gaggle, Trump repeatedly portrayed Venezuela as a failed state that cannot immediately transition to democratic rule, arguing the country’s infrastructure and economy had been devastated by years of mismanagement.

TRUMP ISSUES DIRECT WARNING TO VENEZUELA’S NEW LEADER DELCY RODRÍGUEZ FOLLOWING MADURO CAPTURE

He compared Venezuela’s collapse to what he claimed would have happened to the U.S. had he lost the election, using the comparison to underscore his argument for intervention.

“We have to do one thing in Venezuela. Bring it back. It’s a dead country right now,” Trump said. “It’s a country that, frankly, we would have been if I had lost the election. We would have been Venezuela on steroids.”

Trump said rebuilding Venezuela will center on restoring its oil industry, which he said had been stripped from the U.S. under previous governments, leaving infrastructure decayed and production crippled.

UN AMBASSADOR WALTZ DEFENDS US CAPTURE OF MADURO AHEAD OF SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING

He stressed that American oil companies – not U.S. taxpayers – will finance the reconstruction, while the U.S. oversees the broader recovery.

“The oil companies are going to go in and rebuild this system. They’re going to spend billions of dollars, and they’re going to take the oil out of the ground, and we’re taking back what they sell,” Trump said. “Remember, they stole our property. It was the greatest theft in the history of America. Nobody has ever stolen our property like they have. They took our oil away from us. They took the infrastructure away. And all that infrastructure is rotted and decayed.”

Trump said elections will not take place until the country is stabilized, arguing that rushing a vote in a collapsed state would repeat past failures.

TRUMP REVEALS VENEZUELA’S MADURO WAS CAPTURED IN ‘FORTRESS’-LIKE HOUSE: ‘HE GOT BUM RUSHED SO FAST’

He said the U.S. will manage Venezuela’s recovery process, including addressing inflation, revenue loss and infrastructure collapse.

“We’re going to run everything,” Trump said. “We’re going to run it, fix it. We’ll have elections at the right time.”

When asked whether the operation in Venezuela was motivated by oil interests or amounted to regime change, Trump rejected both characterizations and instead cast the effort as part of a broader security doctrine.

VENEZUELAN LEADER MADURO LANDS IN NEW YORK AFTER BEING CAPTURED BY US FORCES ON DRUG CONSPIRACY CHARGES

He tied the intervention to long-standing U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere, invoking historical precedent.

“It’s about peace on Earth,” Trump said. “You gotta have peace, it’s our hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine was very important when it was done.”

Trump went on to criticize past presidents for failing to enforce that doctrine, arguing his administration has restored it as a guiding principle.

RUBIO DEFENDS VENEZUELA OPERATION AFTER NBC QUESTIONS LACK OF CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL FOR MADURO CAPTURE

“And other presidents, a lot of them, they lost sight of it,” Trump added. “I didn’t. I didn’t lose sight. But it really is. It’s peace on Earth.”

Trump said the U.S. role in Venezuela will ultimately focus on rebuilding the country while caring for Venezuelans displaced by years of economic collapse.

He said that includes Venezuelans currently living in the U.S., many of whom he said were forced to flee.

“We’re gonna cherish a country,” Trump said. “We’re going to take care of, more importantly, of the people, including Venezuelans that are living in our country that were forced to leave their country, and they’re going to be taken very good care of.”

Trump made clear the comments on Venezuela were part of a broader foreign policy outlook, using the gaggle to issue warnings about instability elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere and overseas. He suggested the U.S. is prepared to respond forcefully to threats he said could endanger American security interests.

Trump singled out Colombia, describing the country as a growing security concern and accusing its leadership of enabling large-scale drug trafficking into the U.S.

“Colombia’s very sick too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States, and he’s not going to be doing it very long,” Trump said.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

When asked whether that meant U.S. action, Trump replied, “It sounds good to me.”

Trump also addressed ongoing protests in Iran, warning that the U.S. is closely monitoring the situation and would respond if the Iranian government uses violence against demonstrators.

“We’re watching it very closely,” he said. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States.”

WASHINGTON — Top officials in the Trump administration clarified their position on “running” Venezuela after seizing its president, Nicolás Maduro, over the weekend, pressuring the government that remains in power there Sunday to acquiesce to U.S. demands on oil access and drug enforcement, or else face further military action.

Their goal appears to be the establishment of a pliant vassal state in Caracas that keeps the current government — led by Maduro for more than a decade — largely in place, but finally defers to the whims of Washington after turning away from the United States for a quarter-century.

It leaves little room for the ascendance of Venezuela’s democratic opposition, which won the country’s last national election, according to the State Department, European capitals and international monitoring bodies.

President Trump and his top aides said they would try to work with Maduro’s handpicked vice president and current interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, to run the country and its oil sector “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” offering no time frame for proposed elections.

Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem underscored the strategy in a series of interviews Sunday morning.

“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 magazine, referring to Rodríguez. “Rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.”

Rubio said that a U.S. naval quarantine of Venezuelan oil tankers would continue unless and until Rodríguez begins cooperating with the U.S. administration, referring to the blockade — and the lingering threat of additional military action from the fleet off Venezuela’s coast — as “leverage” over the remnants of Maduro’s government.

“That’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that,” Rubio told CBS News. “We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes — not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN that he had been in touch with the administration since the Saturday night operation that snatched Maduro and his wife from their bedroom, whisking them away to New York to face criminal charges.

Trump’s vow to “run” the country, Cotton said, “means the new leaders of Venezuela need to meet our demands.”

“Delcy Rodríguez, and the other ministers in Venezuela, understand now what the U.S. military is capable of,” Cotton said, adding: “It is a fact that she and other indicted and sanctioned individuals are in Venezuela. They have control of the military and security forces. We have to deal with that fact. But that does not make them the legitimate leaders.”

“What we want is a future Venezuelan government that will be pro-American, that will contribute to stability, order and prosperity, not only in Venezuela but in our own backyard. That probably needs to include new elections,” Cotton said.

Whether Rodríguez will cooperate with the administration is an open question.

Trump said Saturday that she seemed amenable to making “Venezuela great again” in a conversation with Rubio. But the interim president delivered a speech hours later demanding Maduro’s return, and vowing that Venezuela would “never again be a colony of any empire.”

The developments have concerned senior figures in Venezuela’s democratic opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was ultimately stolen by Maduro.

In his Saturday news conference, Trump dismissed Machado, saying that the revered opposition leader was “a very nice woman,” but “doesn’t have the respect within the country” to lead.

Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela in his first term, said he was skeptical that Rodríguez — an acolyte of Hugo Chávez and avowed supporter of Chavismo throughout the Maduro era — would betray the cause.

“The insult to Machado was bizarre, unfair — and simply ignorant,” Abrams told The Times. “Who told him that there was no respect for her?”

Maduro was booked in New York and flown at night over the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he is in federal custody at a facility that has housed inmates including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Ghislaine Maxwell, Bernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried.

He is expected to be arraigned on federal charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices as soon as Monday.

Although few in Washington lamented Maduro’s removal, Democratic lawmakers criticized the operation as another act of ousting a foreign government by a Republican president that could have violated international law.

“The invasion of Venezuela has nothing to do with American security. Venezuela is not a security threat to the U.S.,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut. “This is about making Trump’s oil industry and Wall Street friends rich. Trump’s foreign policy — the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela — is fundamentally corrupt.”

In their Saturday news conference, and in subsequent interviews, Trump and Rubio said that targeting Venezuela was in part about reestablishing U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere, reasserting the philosophy of President Monroe as China and Russia work to enhance their presence in the region. The Trump administration’s national security strategy, published last month, previewed a renewed focus on Latin America after the region faced neglect from Washington over decades.

Trump left unclear whether his military actions in the region would end in Caracas, a long-standing U.S. adversary, or whether he is willing to turn the U.S. armed forces on America’s allies.

In his interview with the Atlantic, Trump suggested that “individual countries” would be addressed on a case-by-case basis. On Saturday, he reiterated a threat to the president of Colombia, a major non-NATO ally, to “watch his ass,” over an ongoing dispute about Bogota’s cooperation on drug enforcement.

On Sunday morning, the United Nations Security Council held an urgent meeting to discuss the legality of the U.S. operation in Venezuela.

It was not Russia or China — permanent members of the council and long-standing competitors — who called the session, nor France, whose government has questioned whether the operation violated international law, but Colombia, a nonpermanent member who joined the council less than a week ago.

California has tried all manner of design in choosing its governor.

Democrat Gray Davis, to name a recent example, had an extensive background in government and politics and a bland demeanor that suggested his first name was also a fitting adjective.

Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, by contrast, was a novice candidate who ran for governor on a whim. His super-sized action hero persona dazzled Californians like the pyrotechnics in one of his Hollywood blockbusters.

In the end, however, their political fates were the same. Both left office humbled, burdened with lousy poll numbers and facing a well of deep voter discontent.

(Schwarzenegger, at least, departed on his own terms. He chased Davis from the Capitol in an extraordinary recall and won reelection before his approval ratings tanked during his second term.)

There are roughly a dozen major candidates for California governor in 2026 and, taken together, they lack even a small fraction of Schwarzenegger’s celebrity wattage.

Nor do any have the extensive Sacramento experience of Davis, who was a gubernatorial chief of staff under Jerry Brown before serving in the Legislature, then winning election as state controller and lieutenant governor.

That’s not, however, to disparage those running.

The contestants include a former Los Angeles mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa; three candidates who’ve won statewide office, former Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, schools Supt. Tony Thurmond and former Controller Betty Yee; two others who gained national recognition during their time in Congress, Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell; and Riverside County’s elected sheriff, Chad Bianco.

The large field offers an ample buffet from which to choose.

The rap on this particular batch of hopefuls is they’re a collective bore, which, honestly, seems a greater concern to those writing and spitballing about the race than a reflection of some great upwelling of citizens clamoring for bread and circuses.

In scores of conversations with voters over the past year, the sentiment that came through, above all, was a sense of practicality and pragmatism. (And, this being a blue bastion, no small amount of horror, fear and loathing directed at the vengeful and belligerent Trump administration.)

It’s never been more challenging and expensive to live in California, a place of great bounty that often exacts in dollars and stress what it offers in opportunity and wondrous beauty.

With a governor seemingly more focused on his personal agenda, a 2028 bid for president, than the people who put him in office, many said they’d like to replace Gavin Newsom with someone who will prioritize California and their needs above his own.

That means a focus on matters such as traffic, crime, fire prevention, housing and homelessness. In other words, pedestrian stuff that doesn’t light up social media or earn an invitation to hold forth on one of the Beltway chat shows.

“Why does it take so long to do simple things?” asked one of those voters, the Bay Area’s Michael Duncan, as he lamented his pothole-ridden, 120-mile round-trip commute between Fairfield and an environmental analyst job in Livermore.

The answer is not a simple one.

Politics are messy, like any human endeavor. Governing is a long and laborious process, requiring study, deliberation and the weighing of competing forces. Frankly, it can be rather dull.

Certainly the humdrum of legislation or bureaucratic rule-marking is nothing like the gossipy speculation about who may or may not bid to lead California as its 41st governor.

Why else was so much coverage devoted to whether Sen. Alex Padilla would jump into the gubernatorial race — he chose not to — and the possible impact his entry would have on the contest, as opposed to, say, his thinking on CEQA or FMAP?

(The former is California’s much-contested Environmental Quality Act; the latter is the formula that determines federal reimbursement for Medi-Cal, the state’s healthcare program for low-income residents.)

Just between us, political reporters tend to be like children in front of a toy shop window. Their bedroom may be cluttered with all manner of diversion and playthings, but what they really want is that shiny, as-yet unattained object — Rick Caruso! — beckoning from behind glass.

Soon enough, once a candidate has entered the race, boredom sets in and the speculation and desire for someone fresh and different starts anew. (Will Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta change his mind and run for governor?)

For their part, many voters always seem to be searching for some idealized candidate who exists only in their imagination.

Someone strong, but not dug in. Willing to compromise, but never caving to the other side. Someone with the virginal purity of a political outsider and the intrinsic capability of an insider who’s spent decades cutting deals and keeping the government wheels spinning.

They look over their choices and ask, in the words of an old song, is that all there is? (Spoiler alert: There are no white knights out there.)

Donald Trump was, foremost, a celebrity before his burst into politics. First as a denizen of New York’s tabloid culture and then as the star of TV’s faux-boardroom drama, “The Apprentice.”

His pizzazz was a large measure of his appeal, along with his manufactured image as a shrewd businessman with a kingly touch and infallible judgment.

His freewheeling political rallies and frothy social media presence were, and continue to be, a source of great glee to his fans and followers.

His performance as president has been altogether different, and far less amusing.

If the candidates for California governor fail to light up a room, that’s not such a bad thing. Fix the roads. Make housing more affordable. Help keep the place from burning to the ground.

Leave the fun and games to the professionals.