Nobel laureate Machado doesn't have 'support or respect' to run Venezuela: Trump

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Saturday said that opposition leader and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado “doesn’t have the support or respect” to run Venezuela, reinforcing Washington’s decision to oversee a transitional government in the country.

Machado, who has been mostly in hiding since Maduro's disputed reelection in July 2024, said in a statement that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, whom the opposition says won the vote, "must immediately assume his constitutional mandate" as president.

"Venezuelans, the HOUR OF FREEDOM has arrived!" she posted on social media after an early-morning US military strike on Caracas.

Machado is abroad in an unknown location after traveling under cover to Oslo in December to receive her Nobel, which she dedicated to US President Donald Trump as she welcomed US intervention in her country.

"Today we are ready to enforce our mandate and take power. Let us remain vigilant, active, and organized until the Democratic Transition is realized. A transition that needs ALL of us," she said on Saturday.

"We are going to restore order," she stated, adding Gonzalez Urrutia must now be "recognized as Commander in Chief of the National Armed Forces by all officers and soldiers."

Trump also warned that his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro, with whom he has sparred in recent months, should "watch his ass" after the US military operation to seize Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

"He's making cocaine, and they're sending it into the United States, so he does have to watch his ass," Trump stated.

US captured Nicolás Maduro and flew him out of the country in a stunning military operation early Saturday. Trump insisted the US government would run the country at least temporarily and was already doing so.

The action marked the culmination of an escalating Trump administration pressure campaign on the oil-rich South American nation as well as weeks of planning aimed at tracking Maduro's behavioural habits, including what he ate and where he slept.

Maduro and his wife, seized overnight from their home on a military base, were aboard a U.S. warship on their way to New York, where they were to face criminal charges in connection with a Justice Department indictment accusing them of a role in narco-terrorism conspiracy.

Trump said the U.S. planned to run Venezuela until a transition of power can take place. He claimed the American presence was already in place, though there were no immediate signs the U.S. was running the country. Venezuelan state TV continued to air pro-Maduro propaganda, broadcasting live images of supporters taking to the streets in Caracas in protest.

“We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference where he boasted that this “extremely successful operation should serve as warning to anyone who would threaten American sovereignty or endanger American lives.”

Trump says US oil firms to head into Venezuela

Trump said 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.

Trump also said, "The embargo on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect."