Is Trump In Charge Of Venezuela? The Maduro Government Says No. What The F-ck Is Going On?

Did Trump just invent, confabulate, wishcast on global television this morning that he was in charge of Venezuela?

Jan 03, 2026

Evening all. Starting by stating that all the usual caveats apply tonight - things are moving fast, there is much happening we cannot see or understand right now….

I offered my initial thoughts on these extraordinarily dangerous set of developments early today. Now for Round 2…..

In this press conference this morning Trump The Terrible told us he was now in charge of Venezuela. His words and meaning were very clear:

This afternoon the Venezuelan government, still very much in charge of the country, disputed Trump’s claim. Here is the NYT (gift link):

President Trump said Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president and would act as a partner in letting the United States run the country.
“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” he said.
Less than two hours later, Ms. Rodríguez — who was Nicolás Maduro’s vice president — delivered a televised address to Venezuela that made clear she viewed the United States as an illegal invader that must be rejected.
“We are determined to be free,” she said. “What is being done to Venezuela is a barbarity.”
Her swift defiance of Mr. Trump made clear that his plans to swoop into the South American nation and run it as his own faced many more hurdles than he suggested in his Saturday news conference declaring victory in Venezuela.
“We had already warned that an aggression was underway under false excuses and false pretenses, and that the masks had fallen off, revealing only one objective: regime change in Venezuela,” she said. “This regime change would also allow for the seizure of our energy, mineral and natural resources. This is the true objective, and the world and the international community must know it.”
Significantly, Ms. Rodríguez delivered her address alongside what she called Venezuela’s National Defense Council, which included the nation’s defense minister, attorney general and the heads of the country’s legislature and judiciary. That unified front directly contradicted Mr. Trump’s claim that the United States would run Venezuela, especially given that White House and Pentagon officials had said that U.S. aircraft and extraction forces had returned to the U.S.S. Iwo Jima.
Venezuela’s defense minister and attorney general also both publicly criticized Mr. Trump and the U.S. military action on Saturday.
In his news conference, Mr. Trump said that Venezuelan leaders must comply with the United States or else. “All political and military figures must realize that what happened to Maduro can happen to them,” he said.
Ms. Rodríguez’s speech also made clear that Mr. Maduro’s supporters — including her — still see him as the nation’s legitimate leader.
She repeatedly said that Mr. Maduro was Venezuela’s “only president” and even the text on Venezuelan state television labeled her as vice president. When she ended, the state broadcaster said that Ms. Rodríguez was the vice president who had just stated that Mr. Maduro was Venezuela’s president.

Did Trump, in another one of his delusions and confabulations, just imagine himself as the new ruler of Venezuela this morning? How does someone get something like this so wrong? And if Trump did invent something of this import, how can he be allowed to keep running the country?

Trump’s shocking throwing of the Nobel Peace Prize winning opposition leader, María Corina Machado, under the bus this morning may have encouraged the remnants of the Maduro regime to decide to fight it out today. For Trump, in all of his idiocy, just kneecapped the global face of the opposition movement, claiming somehow she had no support despite her party winning the last election. Here’s the NYT just now, same gift link:

President Trump said on Saturday that it would be “very tough” for Venezuela’s leading opposition figure, María Corina Machado, to take control of her country, claiming in his televised speech that she was a “very nice woman” but “doesn’t have the support” in Venezuela to lead.
It was a dramatic shift from the Trump administration’s assessment of Ms. Machado’s movement in recent months, in which Washington officials have asserted that her surrogate, Edmundo González, is the country’s rightful president, after his election victory in 2024. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had called Ms. Machado “the personification of resilience, tenacity and patriotism.”