US President Donald Trump has said the United States will assume control of Venezuela’s affairs until a political transition is completed.
Trump made the statement on Saturday during a news conference, where he said Washington would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition”.
“We don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in and end up with the same situation we’ve had for a long period of years,” he said, adding that any transition “has to be judicious, because that’s what we’re all about”.
The declaration followed hours after the United States announced that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and flown out of the South American nation.
Prior to Maduro’s capture, US forces bombed Caracas, an attack that reportedly cut the Venezuelan capital off from the national electricity grid.
Reacting to the strike, Trump described the operation as “an incredible thing to see”, noting that no American troops were killed and no military hardware was lost.
He further claimed that the US had “knocked out 97 per cent of the drugs coming by sea”, alleging that the bulk of the illicit drugs originated from Venezuela.
Trump has on several occasions warned that Washington is preparing additional measures against what it describes as drug trafficking networks operating within Venezuela.
In October, he disclosed that he had authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to operate inside the country in a bid to curb the illegal flow of migrants and drugs from Venezuela.