President Trump said Saturday that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until the new government can be put in place after the American military removed dictator Nicolas Maduro from power.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a proper and judicious transition,” Mr. Trump said. “We don’t want to be involved with someone else getting in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”
Mr. Trump did not provide any details on how the U.S. would run Venezuela or what the time frame would be for a transition to a new government for the country.
“We want peace, liberty and justice for the great people of Venezuela, and that includes many from Venezuela that are now living in the United States and want to go back to their country,” Mr. Trump said at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. “It’s their homeland. We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind after decades of that.”
The president added that U.S. oil companies could be coming to Venezuela to take advantage of the vast oil fields to benefit the Venezuelan people.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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