As Venezuela Projects Defiance, Rubio Says U.S. Will Use ‘Leverage’ to Advance Its Interests

Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested Sunday that the United States did not plan to directly govern Venezuela, appearing to contradict statements by President Donald Trump a day earlier, as top Venezuelan officials projected an official line of defiance a day after a U.S. raid captured President Nicolás Maduro.

The White House has said it believes that Venezuela’s government, under interim leader Delcy Rodríguez, will fall in line, and the nature of the private conversations between Venezuela’s government and U.S. officials is unclear. Rubio did not rule out putting U.S. forces on the ground, but suggested instead that the administration planned to apply pressure on the country’s oil industry to coerce government leaders there to accede to American demands.

In a speech broadcast Sunday, Venezuela’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, rejected any notion that the United States would “run” his country, and maintained that the government that was in place under Maduro is still in charge. Padrino López declared that “our sovereignty has been violated and breached,” and said the country’s armed forces would “continue to employ all its available capabilities for military defense, the maintenance of internal order and the preservation of peace.”

The toll of soldiers and civilians killed as part of Saturday’s U.S. raid rose to 80 on Sunday, according to a senior Venezuelan official. Padrino López said that U.S. forces had killed a “large part” of Maduro’s security detail in the attack. No U.S. service members were killed, U.S. officials said.

Edmundo González, the exiled former diplomat who is widely viewed as the legitimate winner of last year’s presidential election in Venezuela, released a video statement referring to himself as the president of Venezuela and calling for political prisoners to be released.

Maduro is in a New York City jail with his wife, who were both indicted on federal drug trafficking and weapons charges. They are scheduled to make their initial appearances in federal court Monday.

While Trump said Saturday that the United States intends to “run” Venezuela and reclaim American oil interests for the foreseeable future, Pentagon officials said that there were currently no U.S. military personnel in the country.

When asked how the United States planned to govern Venezuela, Rubio did not lay out a plan for a U.S. occupation authority, like the one that the George W. Bush administration put in place in Baghdad during the Iraq War, but instead spoke of coercing an interim Venezuelan government to make policy changes.

In a testy exchange on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rubio complained that people were “fixating” on Trump’s declaration that the U.S. government would run Venezuela. “It’s not running,” he said. “It’s running policy, the policy with regards to this.”

In an earlier interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Rubio said that the large U.S. naval force amassed in the Caribbean Sea off Venezuela will remain “until we see changes, not just to further the national interest of the United States, which is No. 1, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela.”

Here’s what else to know:

— Oil reserves: Rubio focused Sunday, as Trump did a day earlier, on the opportunities for American companies in Venezuela’s oil sector. Trump made clear his desire to open up Venezuela’s vast state-controlled oil reserves to American oil companies, saying, “We are going to run the country right.” But U.S. intervention could prove complicated and expensive.

— Federal charges: An indictment unsealed by a federal judge in New York City charged Maduro; his wife, Cilia Flores; and four others with four counts, including narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of machine guns. Despite the U.S. focus on cocaine trafficking, experts say Venezuela’s role in that trade is modest. Maduro is being held at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.

— Congressional criticism: Congressional Democrats, including leaders typically briefed on classified matters, said they were being kept in the dark by the Trump administration about both the military raid that seized Maduro and information about next steps.

— U.S. strike: In August, a clandestine team of CIA officers slipped into Venezuela. The information they gathered was critical to Saturday’s predawn raid, the riskiest U.S. military operation of its kind since members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Pakistan in 2011.

— Celebration and protest: For some of the millions of Venezuelans living in exile in Colombia, the American attack that deposed their country’s autocratic leader brought hope that they might one day return home. In New York, anti-war protesters gathered to oppose U.S. involvement in Venezuela.