{"id":8854,"date":"2026-01-03T18:13:45","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T18:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/01\/03\/trump-says-we-are-going-to-run-the-country-now-after-removing-venezuelas-president-oregon-public-broadcasting-opb\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T18:13:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T18:13:45","slug":"trump-says-we-are-going-to-run-the-country-now-after-removing-venezuelas-president-oregon-public-broadcasting-opb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/01\/03\/trump-says-we-are-going-to-run-the-country-now-after-removing-venezuelas-president-oregon-public-broadcasting-opb\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says \u2018we are going to run the country now\u2019 after removing Venezuela\u2019s president – Oregon Public Broadcasting – OPB"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By <\/p>\n

Washington Desk \/ NPR staff (NPR)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Jan. 3, 2026 6:03 p.m.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"U.S.<\/picture>
\n

U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions as he announced the creation of the “Trump-class” battleship during a statement to the media at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on December 22, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida.<\/p>\n

Tasos Katopodis<\/em><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is a developing story.<\/i><\/p>\n

President Trump said the U.S. will run Venezuela until a \u201cproper transition can take place,\u201d as he defended Saturday\u2019s military strikes that resulted in the capture of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re there now, but we\u2019re going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place,\u201d Trump told reporters from Mar a Lago. \u201cSo we\u2019re going to stay until such time as we\u2019re going to run it, essentially, until such time as a proper transition can take place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s remarks cap a dramatic few hours that began with reports of explosions in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, the scale of which became apparent only when the president said Maduro and his wife had been captured. Trump later told Fox & Friends that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were being brought by boat to New York where they\u2019d stand trial.<\/p>\n

He said U.S. oil companies would head to Venezuela to operate in their oil reserves, and the military is set to attack again if necessary to secure the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re 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, and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Watch President Trump\u2019s remarks<\/h3>\n

Trump said there were some U.S. injuries sustained during the operation to remove Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s <\/b>Maduro from power, but no fatalities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that gee, I don\u2019t know, is amazing and to have a few injuries but no death on our side was really amazing,\u201d Trump told Fox and Friends ahead of his Mar-a-Lago address.<\/p>\n

Trump told Fox that he watched the \u201cextremely complex\u201d operation unfold \u201clike I was watching a television show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump defended the operation, telling the network, \u201cYou know what, we did a great job with stopping drugs from coming into this country, and nobody\u2019s been able to do it until we came along. But they should say, \u2018great job.\u2019 They could say, \u2018Oh, gee, maybe it\u2019s not constitutional.\u2019 You know, the same old stuff that we\u2019ve been hearing for years and years and years.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was asked by Fox about China\u2019s concerns about control of the oil and responded that he has a good relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not going to be a problem, and they\u2019re going to get oil. We\u2019re going to allow people to have oil, but we can\u2019t take a chance after having done this incredible thing last night of letting somebody else take over, where we have to do it again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Trump did not outline clear next steps for regime change, but noted Venezuela does have a sitting vice president and sent a warning to anyone who might continue supporting Maduro.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, if they stay loyal, the future is really bad, and really bad for them. If they convert, there\u2019s a conversion factor. I would say most of them have converted. He\u2019s had very little loyalty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Washington Desk \/ NPR staff (NPR) Jan. 3, 2026 6:03 p.m. U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions as he announced the creation of the “Trump-class” battleship during a statement to the media at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on December 22, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida. Tasos Katopodis This is a developing story. President Trump said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}