House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Monday that the Trump administration “has no real plan” for the future of Venezuela after the capture and indictment of its leader Nicolás Maduro.
“But there’s no real plan that we’ve heard from the Trump administration as to how to ensure that the Venezuelan people will actually get self-determination, the self-determination that they certainly deserve,” Jeffries told host Lawrence O’Donnell on MS NOW’s “The Last Word.”
Jeffries was part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers that were briefed Monday on the capture of Maduro and next steps by various administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The New York Democrat added that he pressed the administration on what comes next for Venezuela during the briefing and “made clear” that Americans “are not interested” in seeing boots on the ground.
“When you take these types of military actions, but you’re not thinking through what comes next, we’ve seen this turn into a disaster,” Jeffries said, referencing the Iraq War.
After Maduro was arrested Saturday, President Trump told reporters that the U.S. will run Venezuela “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” adding that American oil companies will take over the country’s petroleum infrastructure.
“We don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in and we have the same situation thar we had for last long period of years,” the president added.
The South American country has the largest oil reserves in the world, more than Iraq, Kuwait and the U.S. combined as of 2024, according to OPEC. But last year, it accounted for only 3.5 percent of oil produced by OPEC nations.
Trump also told NBC News Monday that Rubio, Hegseth, Vice President Vance and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller will dictate U.S. policy toward Venezuela. The president noted, though, that he is ultimately in charge.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, pleaded not guilty Monday to narco-terrorism and weapons-related charges in Manhattan federal court. Meanwhile, his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, has taken over as acting president.
Rodríguez, after initially demanding the release of Maduro and Flores, struck a more conciliatory tone towards the U.S. on Sunday.
“We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence,” she wrote on Instagram. “President Donald Trump, our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war.”