President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States will "run" Venezuela and tap its huge oil reserves after snatching leftist leader Nicolas Maduro out of the country during a bombing raid on Caracas.
Trump was addressing the press at his Mar-a-Lago club hours after a lightning attack in which special forces grabbed Maduro and his wife, while airstrikes pounded multiple sites, stunning the capital city.
He was joined by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and top US General Dan Caine.
Trump did not go into detail about what he meant but told a press conference in Florida: "We're going to be running it with a group."
"We're designating people," he said, mentioning that cabinet officials standing with him would be in charge.
In another surprise, Trump indicated that US troops could be deployed in Venezuela.
The US is "not afraid of boots on the ground," he said.
Although the operation is being framed as a law-enforcement action, Trump made clear that regime change and Venezuela's oil riches are the major goals.
He said that he would allow American oil companies to head into Venezuela to tap its massive crude reserves.
"We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump told a press conference.
"We'll be selling large amounts of oil," he said.
Trump also said that the US is ready for a second, 'much bigger' wave of strikes in Venezuela.
Trump added that "the embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect."
Elaborating on the operation, Trump said that the US military caused a blackout in the Venezuelan capital Caracas so it could carry out the operation to seize Maduro.
"It was dark. The lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have," Trump told a press conference.
Prior to the presser, Trump posted a photo of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in custody on a US naval ship and wearing both a blindfold and handcuffs.
"Nicolas Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, along with a picture showing Maduro hours after he was snatched by US forces.
The Venezuelan leader had on what appeared to be noise-canceling ear muffs and grey Nike-branded sweatpants and jacket.
Trump further added that that Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has said she is ready to work with Washington.
Trump told reporters that Rubio "just had a conversation with her, and she's essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again."
Trump also brushed aside Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader Maria Corina Machado as a potential interim leader of Venezuela, as he said Washington was working with deposed Nicolas Maduro's vice president.
"I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country," Trump told a news conference.
"She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect."
Trump also warned his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro - with whom he has sparred in recent months - saying that he should "watch his ass".
"He's making cocaine and they're sending it into the United States, so he does have to watch his ass," Trump told a press conference.
Petro described Washington's actions as an "assault on the sovereignty" of Latin America and said they would result in a humanitarian crisis.
Addressing the same press conference, Marco Rubio, a sworn foe of Cuba's communist government, warned Havana.
"If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I'd be concerned at least a little bit," Rubio told a news conference alongside President Donald Trump.
The US military operation to extract Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a nighttime raid in Caracas took "months of planning and rehearsal," and more than 150 US aircraft were used, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff General Dan Caine told reporters Saturday.
"The word integration does not explain the sheer complexity of such a mission, an extraction so precise -- it involved more than 150 aircraft launching across the Western Hemisphere," Caine told the joint press conference with Donald Trump.
He further said that the Venezuelan President and his wife Cilia Flores surrendered to US forces in Caracas, before being extracted from the country to face federal drug trafficking-related charges in New York.
"Maduro and his wife, both indicted, gave up and were taken into custody by the Department of Justice, assisted by our incredible US military with professionalism and precision, with no loss of US life," General Dan Caine, t, told a press conference.
The United States hit Venezuela with a "large-scale strike" early Saturday and said its president had been captured and flown out of the country after months of intense pressure on Maduro's government — an extraordinary nighttime operation.
After the operation, in an interview with Fox News, Trump said that Maduro and his wife are aboard a US warship and will face prosecution in New York.
The legal authority for the strike, and whether Trump consulted Congress beforehand, was not immediately clear.
Trump was met with condemnation from across the globe following the strike as many others urged for de-escalation and restraint.
(With inputs from AFP)