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 recognised Maduro’s Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez as Venezuela’s new leader instead of backing Maria 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 Rodriguez.
“But Marco speaks to her all the time,” he said of the Secretary of State. Trump added: “I will tell you that we are in constant communication with her and the administration.”
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.
Shortly after four New York Times reporters sat down to speak with him, Trump paused the interview to take a call from President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, days after Trump threatened to target the country because of its role as a cocaine hub.
As the call was connected, the President invited the Times reporters to remain in the Oval Office to hear the conversation with the Colombian President, on the condition that its contents remain off the record. He was joined in the room by Vice-President JD Vance and Rubio, both of whom left after the call concluded.
After speaking to Petro, Trump dictated to an aide a post for his social media account saying that the Colombian President had called “to explain the situation of drugs” coming out of rural cocaine mills in Colombia and that Trump had invited him to visit Washington.
Petro’s call – which ran about an hour – appeared to dissipate any immediate threat of US military action, and Trump indicated he believed that the decapitation of the Maduro regime had intimidated other leaders in the region to fall into line. During the lengthy conversation with the Times, Trump revelled in the success of the operation that broke into the heavily fortified compound in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, and resulted in the capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
He said he had tracked the training of the forces for the operation, down to the creation of a life-size replica of the compound at a military facility in Kentucky.
The President said that as the operation unfolded, he was worried it could end up being a “Jimmy Carter disaster. That destroyed his entire administration.” He was referring to the failed operation on April 24, 1980, to rescue 52 American hostages held in Iran. A US helicopter collided with an aircraft in the desert, a tragedy that haunted Carter’s legacy but led to the creation of far more disciplined, well-trained special operations forces.
“I don’t know that he would have won the election,” Trump said of Carter, “but he certainly had no chance after that disaster.”
He contrasted the success of the seizure of Maduro, in an operation that appears to have killed about 70 Venezuelans and Cubans, among others, to operations under his predecessors that had gone wrong.
“You know you didn’t have a Jimmy Carter crashing helicopters all over the place, that you didn’t have a Biden Afghanistan disaster where they couldn’t do the simplest manoeuvre,” he said, referring to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of 13 US service members.
Trump said that he had already begun to make money for the United States by taking oil that has been under sanctions. He referred to his Tuesday night announcement that the United States would obtain 30 million to 50 million barrels of heavy Venezuelan crude oil.
But he offered no time period for that process, and he acknowledged it would take years to revive the country’s neglected oil sector.
“The oil will take a while,” he said.
Trump appeared far more focused on the rescue mission than the details of how to navigate Venezuela’s future. He declined to say what might prompt him to put US forces on the ground in the country.
“I wouldn’t want to tell you that,” he said.
Would he insert US troops if the Venezuelan Government blocked him from access to the country’s oil? Would he send them in if Venezuela refused to kick out Russian and Chinese personnel, as his administration has demanded?
“I can’t tell you that,” Trump said. “I really wouldn’t want to tell you that, but they’re treating us with great respect. As you know, we’re getting along very well with the administration that is there right now.”
He sidestepped a question about why he declined to install the man the United States declared the winner of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, Edmundo González. González was essentially a proxy candidate for the lead opposition leader, Machado.
He reiterated that Maduro’s allies are co-operating with the United States, despite their hostile public statements.
“They’re giving us everything that we feel is necessary,” he said. “Don’t forget, they took the oil from us years ago.”
He was referring to the nationalisation of facilities built by American oil companies. Trump has already been talking to American oil executives about investing in the Venezuelan fields, but many are reluctant, worried that the operation to run the country could falter when Trump leaves office, or that Venezuela’s military and intelligence services would undercut the effort because they were being cut out of the profits.
Trump said that he would like to travel to Venezuela in the future.
“I think at some point it’ll be safe,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: David E. Sanger, Tyler Pager, Katie Rogers and Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Photographs by: Doug Mills
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
