No Maduro, No Successor: Delcy Rodríguez Now Rules Venezuela; Maduro is Venezuela’s only president, says VP Delcy Rodriguez

Maduro is Venezuela’s only president, says VP Delcy Rodriguez

by Ryan Mancini - 01/03/26 4:44 PM ET

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5671446-venezuelan-vice-president-defends-maduro/

 

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez on Saturday said President Nicolás Maduro is their country’s only president, several hours after U.S. troops captured him and his wife to face charges in New York.

 

“There is only one president in Venezuela, and his name is Nicolas Maduro Moros,” Rodriguez said in a televised address to Venezuelans hours after the U.S. strikes and Maduro’s capture.

 

President Trump said that Rodríguez was sworn in as Venezuela’s new president, but her show of support for Maduro’s presidency appeared to dismiss Trump’s remark. She told citizens that the attack on Venezuela was “barbarity” and demanded the U.S. release Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.

 

“We had already warned that an aggression was underway under false excuses and false pretenses, and that the masks had fallen off, revealing only one objective: regime change in Venezuela,” she said, according to The New York Times. “This regime change would also allow for the seizure of our energy, mineral and natural resources. This is the true objective, and the world and the international community must know it.”

 

Rodríguez added that she is willing to talk and “have respectful relations” with the Trump administration.

 

“It is the only thing we will accept for a type of relationship after having attacked [Venezuela],” Rodríguez said, according to The Associated Press.

 

Following the attack, Rodríguez called on the U.S. to show “proof of life” of Maduro and Flores. She condemned the attacks and capture as a “complete brutal aggression against our people.”

 

The U.S. carried out strikes in the capital of Caracas early Saturday morning. The U.S. Army’s Delta Force entered Maduro’s compound and arrested him and Flores. Both were flown to the aircraft carrier USS Iwo Jima headed for New York, where the two will face charges.

 

Attorney General Pam Bondi unsealed Maduro and Flores’s indicting charges, which are a superseding indictment on Saturday that builds on charges initially filed against Maduro in 2020.

 

Trump told reporters from his Mar-a-Lago resort that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela until the country has a peaceful transition of power. He did not say if opposition leader María Corina Machado should take over, claiming that she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.”

 

Machado praised Maduro’s capture and wrote in a letter shared on the social platform X that “the hour of freedom has arrived!” She said opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, whom Maduro defeated in Venezuela’s elections in 2024 amid allegations of widespread voter fraud, should take over.