US President Donald Trump threatened that if the new Venezuelan leader, Delcy Rodriguez, “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” in a Sunday interview with The Atlantic.
This comes after the US conducted a high-stakes operation in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, on Saturday that resulted in the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
On Saturday, Trump indicated that he would work with Rodriguez rather than with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. The president said that he believed that Rodriguez was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
However, in her first speech since Maduro’s capture, Rodriguez appeared to break from Trump’s expectations.
“There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolas Maduro Moros,” she said.
Trump says US should control Greenland 'for defense'
Rodriguez has also since claimed the government has received no proof that Maduro and the first lady are alive and has formally demanded confirmation from Washington.
“We shall never be a colony ever again,” she said, adding that Venezuela’s defense council was ready to “defend our natural resources.”
Trump told The Atlantic that he was not opposed to a second wave of military action in Venezuela.
“You know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse,” he said.
“Rebuilding is not a bad thing in Venezuela’s case. The country’s gone to hell. It’s a failed country. It’s a totally failed country. It’s a country that’s a disaster in every way.”
Trump has said that the US needs to maintain control of the Western Hemisphere in his own interpretation of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which the president is calling the “Donroe Doctrine.” However, he told The Atlantic that he decided to capture Maduro for reasons apart from geography.
“It’s not hemisphere. It’s the country. It’s individual countries,” he said in the phone call.
Trump went on to assert that the US would intervene in other countries if he deemed it necessary.
The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer asked the president if he believed that the US operation in Venezuela could be interpreted as a preemptive action to take Greenland.
"You know, I wasn’t referring to Greenland at that time. But we do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense,” Trump said, adding that the island is “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships.”
Trump has previously said that the US should control Greenland, which the autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark rejects.
In his 2016 campaign, Trump promised that the US would “stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about.”
Scherer then asked the president whether he believed his actions in Venezuela were different from those he had previously opposed in Iraq.
“I didn’t do Iraq. That was Bush. You’ll have to ask Bush that question, because we should have never gone into Iraq. That started the Middle East disaster,” he said.