President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as head of Venezuela following the capture of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces earlier that day.
“I understand she was just sworn in, but she was, as you know, picked by Maduro. Marco [Rubio] is working on that directly. He just had a conversation with her, and she’s essentially willing to do what we think its necessary to Make Venezuela great again, very simple,” President Trump told reporters.
At another part of the press conference, President Trump said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth will be a “team” that will work with the people of Venezuela to make sure that “we have Venezuela right.”
“Because for us to just leave, who’s gonna take over? I mean, there’s nobody to take over. You have a Vice President who’s been appointed by Maduro, and right now she is the Vice President and she is, I guess, the President, she was sworn as President just a little while ago,” President Trump said. “She had a long conversation with Marco and she said, ‘We’ll do whatever you need.’ I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn’t have a choice.”
Rodríguez served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018 and as oil minister since 2024 in addition to having occupied several other high-ranking positions at the Maduro regime throughout the past two decades. Her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, presently serves as head of the socialist-controlled National Assembly, with the brother-and-sister-group representing one of the most powerful alliances of the regime’s civilian wing. The Venezuelan vice presidency is not a democratically elected position and can be freely appointed and removed by the president as per the nation’s constitution.
Rodríguez’s whereabouts remain publicly uncertain at press time. Reuters, citing “four sources familiar with her movements,” said that the Venezuelan Vice President was in Russia — but noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry “dismissed the report about Rodriguez’s presence in their country as ‘fake.’”
On Saturday morning, Rodríguez spoke to VTV, the Venezuelan regime’s flagship news channel, and asserted that the Venezuelan regime had no information on Maduro’s whereabouts after he and his wife Cilia Flores were captured by U.S. forces earlier that day. Rodríguez demanded that the U.S. government immediately shows “proof of life” of Maduro and Flores.
In 2018, during President Trump’s first term, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Delcy Rodríguez, her brother Jorge, the now-captured Cilia Flores, and other members of the Maduro regime. Similarly, the European Union imposed sanctions on Delcy Rodríguez in 2018.
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