Trump Says U.S. Oversight of Venezuela Could Last for Years

In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, President Trump said “only time will tell” when it comes to how long the United States aims to control the country.President Trump in the Oval Office with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesJan. 8, 2026Updated 3:14 a.m. ETPresident Trump said on 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 American military action from an armada just off shore.“We will rebuild it in a very profitable way,” Mr. 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.”Mr. 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, Mr. 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, Mr. Trump addressed a wide range of topics, including the fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis, immigration, the Russia-Ukraine war, Greenland and NATO, his health and his plans for further White House renovations.Mr. Trump did not answer questions about why he recognized Mr. 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 Mr. Maduro in 2024 and recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. He declined to comment when asked if he had spoken to Ms. Rodríguez.“But Marco speaks to her all the time,” he said of the secretary of state. Mr. Trump added: “I will tell you that we are in constant communication with her and the administration.”Mr. 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, Mr. Trump paused the interview to take a call from President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, days after Mr. 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 Mr. Rubio, both of whom left after the call concluded.ImageA White House aide provided Mr. Trump with a note stating that the president of Colombia was calling during an interview with The New York Times.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesAfter speaking to Mr. Petro, Mr. 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 Mr. Trump had invited him to visit Washington.Mr. Petro’s call — which ran about an hour — appeared to dissipate any immediate threat of U.S. military action, and Mr. 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, Mr. Trump reveled in the success of the operation that broke into the heavily-fortified compound in Caracas and resulted in the capture of Mr. 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. An American helicopter collided with an aircraft in the desert, a tragedy that haunted Mr. Carter’s legacy but led to the creation of a far more disciplined, well-trained special operations forces.“ I don’t know that he would have won the election,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Carter, “but he certainly had no chance after that disaster.”He contrasted the success of the seizure of Mr. 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 maneuver,” he said, referring to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of 13 American servicemembers.Mr. 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 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.Mr. 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 American forces on the ground in the country.ImageSupporters of the Maduro government demonstrating in Caracas on Wednesday.Credit...The New York Times“I wouldn’t want to tell you that,” he said.Would he insert American 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,” said Mr. Trump. “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. Mr. Gonzales was essentially a proxy candidate for the lead opposition leader, Ms. Machado.He reiterated that Mr. Maduro’s allies are cooperating 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 nationalization of facilities built by American oil companies. Mr. 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 Mr. Trump leaves office, or that Venezuela’s military and intelligence services would undercut the effort because they were being cut out of the profits.Mr. Trump said that he would like to travel Venezuela in the future.“I think at some point it’ll be safe,” he said.David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.Katie Rogers is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.SKIP