LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump continues to suggest a lengthy and active U.S. role in Venezuela after capturing leader Nicolás Maduro. Well, he said the U.S. will run Venezuela for a period.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Trump has proposed several plans for the future of Venezuela's government and economy, with U.S. companies playing a key role. And now, apparently, Venezuela is handing over oil to the U.S. In a few minutes, we'll talk about all this with former diplomat Tom Shannon. But first, let's get the latest information.
FADEL: NPR's Franco Ordoñez joins us now to talk about all of this. Hey, Franco.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, HOST:
Hey, Leila.
FADEL: OK. So many questions about what's next for Venezuela, and it feels like everything is kind of happening ad hoc. Does the president have a plan?
ORDOÑEZ: I mean, there really are so many questions. The truth is, President Trump and his aides are not really clear about the future of Venezuela. As we've reported, you know, they did not get behind the popular opposition leader, María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, saying she didn't have enough support from the people. And while there have been a lot of calls for new elections in an interview about Venezuela's future, Trump told NBC News it's going to take a, quote, "period of time," and the U.S. first needs to, quote, "nurse the country back to health" again.
FADEL: OK. So who is running the country then? Who's going to run the country?
ORDOÑEZ: Well, for now, Trump is backing Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez. And there are also a number of other ministers from the Maduro regime, who are still in charge, including his interior minister and his defense minister. I was actually talking with Ambassador John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in the first Trump administration, and he told me that he doesn't see those officials just rolling over for Trump.
JOHN BOLTON: I don't think that's what they think they're doing. I think they think they are still the Maduro regime, just without Maduro. And I think it's going to be very hard, much harder than Trump understands, to get them to do what he wants them to do.
ORDOÑEZ: And, Leila, it sure looks like the regime is fighting all it can to hold on, cracking down on dissent in Venezuela, arresting journalists and others. And I should probably also note that Bolton has become a fierce Trump critic after he was fired from the administration. And more recently, Trump's Department of Justice is prosecuting Bolton for allegedly mishandling classified info.
FADEL: Right. And there are a lot of questions about what Trump means when he says the U.S. will run Venezuela, right?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah, absolutely. Right now, and - you know, while Trump's secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has been having conversations with Rodríguez, a lot of eyes are also actually on Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, who's also among the group of U.S. officials overseeing Venezuela. Now, of course, Rubio - he's a Cuban American from Miami, certainly well steeped in these issues, having worked on them for decades. Miller is better known for his immigration policies, and more recently, actually, depicting U.S. ruling over the hemisphere by force.
FADEL: And President Trump has made it clear that a lot of this is about Venezuela's oil, and he made a pretty stunning announcement last night on Truth Social. What did he say?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. I mean, last night, Trump announced on social media that Venezuela will turn over 30 to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S., and then the U.S. will sell it at market price with proceeds overseen by him.
FADEL: Is this all aboveboard? I mean, is this legal?
ORDOÑEZ: I mean, I think the circumstances of which Venezuela is giving this oil are also very unclear. I mean, Trump is saying that U.S. may also subsidize the oil companies to help revive Venezuela's oil industry, which really indicates a much longer-term project for the U.S. Trump has said it could take less than 18 months to rebuild the Venezuelan infrastructure, but experts say it'll take much longer, multiple years to fix the decaying system.
FADEL: OK. So many questions ahead. I'm sure we'll be talking again very soon. Thank you, Franco.
ORDOÑEZ: Thank you.
FADEL: That's White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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