Trump says US oversight of Venezuela could last for years

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said Wednesday evening that he expected the United States would be running Venezuela and extracting oil from its huge reserves for years, and insisted that the interim government of the country—all former loyalists to the now-imprisoned Nicolás Maduro—is "giving us everything that we feel is necessary.""Only time will tell," he said, when asked how long the administration will demand direct oversight of the South American nation, with the hovering threat of US military action from an armada just off shore. "We will rebuild it in a very profitable way," Trump said during a nearly two-hour interview. "We're going to be using oil, and we're going to be taking oil. We're getting oil prices down, and we're going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need."Trump's remarks came hours after administration officials said the United States plans to effectively assume control of selling Venezuela's oil indefinitely, part of a three-phase plan that Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined for members of Congress. While Republican lawmakers have been largely supportive of the administration's actions, Democrats on Wednesday reiterated their warnings that the United States was headed toward a protracted international intervention without clear legal authority.During the wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Trump did not give a precise time range for how long the United States would remain Venezuela's political overlord. Would it be three months? Six months? A year? Longer?"I would say much longer," the president replied.Over the course of the interview, Trump addressed a wide range of topics, including the fatal Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting in Minneapolis, immigration, the Russia-Ukraine war, Greenland and NATO, his health and his plans for further White House renovations.Trump did not answer questions about why he recognized Maduro's vice president Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela's new leader instead of backing María Corina Machado, the opposition leader whose party led a successful election campaign against Maduro in 2024 and recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. He declined to comment when asked if he had spoken to Rodríguez.Trump also made no commitments about when elections would be held in Venezuela, which had a long democratic tradition from the late 1950s until Hugo Chavez took power in 1999.