President Donald Trump issued a pointed warning to Venezuela’s new leader on Sunday, suggesting severe consequences if she continues to resist U.S. demands following the American-led operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Trump said Delcy Rodríguez would ‘pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro’ if she fails to ‘do what’s right,’ adding that his administration would not tolerate what he described as her defiant rejection of the U.S. intervention.

Defending that approach, Trump said, ‘Rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse,’ he added.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. 

Trump’s remarks followed a stunning predawn announcement Saturday that U.S. operators had carried out a mission to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

Speaking at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said a U.S.-appointed team would ‘run Venezuela’ until the country’s political leadership was stabilized.

He also pledged a return of U.S. energy investment to the cash-strapped Latin American country which sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves. 

Trump framed his foreign policy approach, according to The Atlantic, through what he described as a modernized version of the Monroe Doctrine, the 19th-century policy opposing European colonial influence in the Western Hemisphere. 

Trump referred to his approach as the ‘Donroe Doctrine.’

Trump also hinted that Venezuela would not be the last nation to face U.S. pressure, raising the prospect of additional interventions beyond Latin America.

As an example, he reiterated his long-standing interest in Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally.

‘We do need Greenland, absolutely,’ Trump told the magazine, citing U.S. national security interests and strategic location.

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk appear to have repaired their once-strained relationship, according to a post shared by the billionaire Tesla founder on X.

In a post shared Sunday, Musk wrote, ‘Had a lovely dinner last night with @POTUS and @FLOTUS,’ before adding, ‘2026 is going to be amazing!’

The photo, taken from a Saturday evening event at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, sparked speculation that the pair’s bromance may be back on after more than a year of tension.

After the 2024 campaign, Musk became one of the Republican Party’s biggest political donors, contributing hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Reuters.

Trump later tapped Musk to advise the government efficiency effort and set up DOGE, focused on reducing federal spending and streamlining operations – but Musk stepped back from the role in mid-2025 amid mounting criticism. 

Tensions also resurfaced when Musk publicly criticized Trump-backed spending proposals and raised concerns about the size of federal outlays.

‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,’ Musk said in a June 3 post about Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.

‘This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,’ Musk complained.

Trump shot back that he was ‘very disappointed’ in Musk’s criticism of his bill at the time before adding, ‘Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore.’

Musk shot back on X saying, ‘Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.’

At one point, Musk suggested he could form a new political party. But by late 2025, both sides appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone.

In September, the two were seen shaking hands at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in a box at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

Musk was also seen at a White House dinner in November as Trump hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

FOX Business’ Edward Lawrence also asked Trump at a cabinet meeting on Dec. 2 if Musk was ‘back in [his] circle of friends’ after their falling out.

‘Well, I really don’t know. I mean, I like Elon a lot,’ Trump replied.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.

As President Donald Trump  vows to return U.S. energy investment to Venezuela, the Latin American country remains on the hook for billions of dollars owed to American energy companies following years-old legal battles over oil contracts.

Once a key supplier to global oil markets, Venezuela reshaped its relationship with international energy companies in the mid-2000s, as then-President Hugo Chávez tightened state control over the oil industry.

Between 2004 and 2007, Chávez effectively forced foreign companies to renegotiate their contracts with the government. The new terms sharply reduced the role and profits of private firms while strengthening Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).

The move drove some of the world’s largest oil companies out of the country.

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips exited Venezuela in 2007 and later filed claims against the government in international arbitration courts. Those courts ultimately ruled in favor of the companies, ordering Venezuela to pay ConocoPhillips more than $10 billion and ExxonMobil more than $1 billion.

While precise figures are difficult to verify since Venezuela has not published comprehensive debt statistics in years, the International Monetary Fund estimates the country’s economy will total about $82.8 billion in 2025. 

Debt levels, however, stand at nearly 200% of that total, meaning Venezuela owes nearly two dollars for every dollar it produces. 

On top of that, Venezuela has failed to repay about $60 billion in bonds, with total foreign debt rising to roughly $150 billion when loans from its top financial bankers, including Russia and China, are included.

PDVSA also issued a bond that was supposed to be repaid in 2020, backed by a majority ownership stake in U.S.-based refiner Citgo as collateral. The state-run oil company later defaulted on that payment, putting Citgo in the legal crosshairs of creditors seeking to recover billions they are owed.

The cash-strapped country, which sits atop of the globe’s largest oil reserves, has paid only a fraction of those awards.

Chevron, however, remained in the country, becoming the only U.S. energy company still operating in Venezuela amid years of sanctions, economic collapse and political turmoil.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Chevron said the firm was following ‘relevant laws and regulations’ but declined to comment on future investment plans in Venezuela.

‘Chevron remains focused on the safety and well-being of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets,’ the statement added.

On Saturday, Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago that he wanted U.S. oil companies to ‘spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken oil infrastructure and start making money for the country.’

He added that the United States ‘built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive and skill,’ and said that once the country’s energy sector is revived, the U.S. would sell that oil to markets around the world.

Venezuela’s heavy financial liabilities underscore the hurdles U.S. energy companies would face in committing new investment, despite Trump’s pledge to reengage.

It can fairly be said that the most precarious jobs in the world are those of a golf ball collector at a driving range, a mascot at a Chuck E. Cheese and a Trump administration lawyer.

That was evident at the press conference yesterday as President Donald Trump blew apart the carefully constructed narrative presented earlier for the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Some of us had written that Trump had a winning legal argument by focusing on the operation as the seizure of two indicted individuals in reliance on past judicial rulings, including the decisions in the case of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stayed on script and reinforced this narrative. Both repeatedly noted that this was an operation intended to bring two individuals to justice and that law enforcement personnel were part of the extraction team to place them in legal custody. Rubio was, again, particularly effective in emphasizing that Maduro was not the head of state but a criminal dictator who took control after losing democratic elections.

However, while noting the purpose of the capture, Trump proceeded to declare that the United States would engage in nation-building to achieve lasting regime change. He stated that they would be running Venezuela to ensure a friendly government and the repayment of seized U.S. property dating back to the government of Maduro’s mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

This city is full of self-proclaimed Trump whisperers who rarely score above random selection in their predictions. However, there are certain pronounced elements in Trump’s approach to such matters. First, he is the most transparent president in my lifetime, with prolonged (at times excruciatingly long) press conferences and a brutal frankness about his motivations. Second, he is unabashedly and undeniably transactional in most of his dealings. He is not ashamed to state what he wants the country to get out of the deal.

In Venezuela, he wants a stable partner, and he wants oil.

Chávez and Maduro had implemented moronic socialist policies that reduced one of the most prosperous nations to an economic basket case. They brought in Cuban security thugs to help keep the population under repressive conditions, as a third fled to the United States and other countries.

After an extraordinary operation to capture Maduro, Trump was faced with socialist Maduro allies on every level of the government. He is not willing to allow those same regressive elements to reassert themselves.

The problem is that, if the purpose was regime change, this attack was an act of war, which is why Rubio struggled to bring the presser back to the law enforcement purpose. I have long criticized the erosion of the war declaration powers of Congress, including my representation of members of Congress in opposition to Obama’s Libyan war effort.

The fact, however, is that we lost that case. Trump knows that. Courts have routinely dismissed challenges to undeclared military offensives against other nations. In fairness to Trump, most Democrats were as quiet as church mice when Obama and Hillary Clinton attacked Libya’s capital and military sites to achieve regime change without any authorization from Congress. They were also silent when Obama vaporized an American under this ‘kill list’ policy without even a criminal charge. So please spare me the outrage now.

My strong preferences for congressional authorization and consultation are immaterial. The question I am asked as a legal analyst is whether this operation would be viewed as lawful. The answer remains yes.

The courts have previously upheld the authority of presidents to seize individuals abroad, including the purported heads of state. This case is actually stronger in many respects than the one involving Noriega. Maduro will now make the same failed arguments that Noriega raised. He should lose those challenges under existing precedent. If courts apply the same standards to Trump (which is often an uncertain proposition), Trump will win on the right to seize Maduro and bring him to justice.

But then, how about the other rationales rattled off at Mar-a-Lago? In my view, it will not matter. Here is why:

The immediate purpose and result of the operation was to capture Maduro and to bring him to face his indictment in New York. That is Noriega 2.0. The administration put him into custody at the time of extraction with law enforcement personnel and handed him over to the Justice Department for prosecution.

The Trump administration can then argue that it had to deal with the aftermath of that operation and would not simply leave the country without a leader or stable government. Trump emphasized, ‘We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.’

I still do not like the import of those statements. Venezuelans must be in charge of their own country and our role, if any, must be to help them establish a democratic and stable government. Trump added, ‘We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.’

The devil is in the details. Venezuelans must decide who has their best interests in mind, not the United States.

However, returning to the legal elements, I do not see how a court could free Maduro simply because it disapproves of nation-building. Presidents have engaged in such policies for years. The aftermath of the operation is distinct from its immediate purpose. Trump can argue that, absent countervailing action from Congress, he has the authority under Article II of the Constitution to lay the foundation for a constitutional and economic revival in Venezuela.

He will leave it to his lawyers to make that case. It is not the case that some of us preferred, but it is the case that he wants to be made. He is not someone who can be scripted. It is his script and he is still likely to prevail in holding Maduro and his wife for trial.

Dan Bongino returned to private life on Sunday after serving as deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for less than a year.

Bongino said on X that Saturday was his last day on the job before he would return to ‘civilian life.’

‘It’s been an incredible year thanks to the leadership and decisiveness of President Trump. It was the honor of a lifetime to work with Director Patel, and to serve you, the American people. See you on the other side,’ he wrote.

The former FBI deputy director announced in mid-December that he would be leaving his role at the bureau at the start of the new year.

President Donald Trump previously praised Bongino, who assumed office in March, for his work at the FBI.

‘Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show,’ Trump told reporters.

Bongino spoke publicly about the personal toll of the job during a May appearance on ‘Fox & Friends,’ saying he had sacrificed a lot to take the role.

‘I gave up everything for this,’ he said, citing the long hours both he and FBI Director Kash Patel work.

‘I stare at these four walls all day in D.C., by myself, divorced from my wife — not divorced, but I mean separated — and it’s hard. I mean, we love each other, and it’s hard to be apart,’ he added.

Bongino’s departure leaves Andrew Bailey, who was appointed co-deputy director in September 2025, as the bureau’s other deputy director.

Vice President JD Vance was not physically present at President Donald Trump’s news conference announcing the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro because of heightened security and secrecy concerns, according to a spokesperson, despite being closely involved in the planning and execution of the operation.

Trump briefed the press on the mission hours after Maduro was taken into U.S. custody, flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and chairman of the joint chiefs, Gen. Dan Caine. 

Vance publicly praised the operation on X but did not attend the briefing. Vance did meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday to discuss the strikes, but was not at Trump’s golf club Friday night where senior Trump officials monitored the mission because the national security team ‘was concerned a late-night motorcade movement by the Vice President while the operation was getting underway may tip off the Venezuelans.’ 

‘The Vice President joined by secure video conference throughout the night to monitor the operation. He returned to Cincinnati after the operation concluded.’

Due to ‘increased security concerns,’ Trump and Vance are limiting the ‘frequency and duration’ of time they spend together outside of the White House, the Vance spokesperson told Fox News Digital. 

‘Maduro is the newest person to find out that President Trump means what he says,’ Vance wrote on X after the operation was made public. 

‘And PSA for everyone saying this was ‘illegal’: Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narco-terrorism. You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas,’ he wrote in a separate post. 

Trump, during his news conference, revealed that the U.S. will ‘run’ Venezuela until a ‘safe, orderly’ transition of power can take place. 

Pressed on whether U.S. forces would remain inside the country, Trump did not rule out a sustained troop presence. ‘They always say boots on the ground – so we’re not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to,’ he said, confirming U.S. troops were already involved ‘at a very high level’ during the operation. 

Trump noted Venezuela’s vice president had been ‘picked by Maduro,’ but said U.S. officials were already engaging with her. ‘She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great,’ Trump said, adding that the issue was being handled directly by his team.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has been sworn in as Maduro’s successor, and Trump did not say whether the U.S. will move to install opposition leaders Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Urutia-Gonzalez. 

Vance, in the past, has voiced skepticism of U.S. interventions. 

In a Signal chat leaked after the Houthi strikes last March, Vance told a group of Trump Cabinet officials, ‘I think we are making a mistake.’

‘[Three] percent of U.S. trade runs through the Suez Canal. Forty percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,’ Vance said. 

‘I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.’

Cuban leaders should be concerned following the U.S. military operation in Venezuela and the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday, as President Donald Trump signaled that his administration could shift its focus to the Caribbean island.

Cuba has long maintained a presence in Venezuela, with intelligence agents and security personnel embedded amid close relations between Havana and Caracas.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said Venezuela’s spy agency was ‘basically full of Cubans,’ as was Maduro’s security detail.

‘One of the biggest problems Venezuelans have is they have to declare independence from Cuba,’ he said during a news conference in which officials revealed details of the military operation. ‘They tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint.’

He added that the communist island was ‘a disaster. It’s run by incompetent, senile men — and in some cases, not senile, but incompetent nonetheless.’

The secretary has repeatedly denounced Cuba and its leadership as a dictatorship and a failed state.

‘If I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I’d be concerned — at least a little bit,’ Rubio said.

Trump said Cuba was something his administration would ‘end up talking about because Cuba is a failing nation right now — a very badly failing nation.’

‘And we want to help the people,’ he added. ‘It’s very similar in the sense that we want to help the people in Cuba, but we also want to help the people who were forced out of Cuba and are living in this country.’

Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken by U.S. forces and brought aboard the USS Iwo Jima. They were expected to be transported to the U.S. to face federal charges.

The couple, along with other Venezuelan officials, face ‘drug trafficking and narco-terrorism conspiracies,’ according to an unsealed indictment posted on social media Saturday by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

They are accused of partnering with drug cartels to traffic drugs into the U.S.

Maduro and his wife ‘will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,’ Bondi wrote.

They are charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the U.S.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday evening condemned the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, calling the operation both ‘unlawful’ and ‘unwise.’

In a lengthy post on X, Harris acknowledged that Maduro is a ‘brutal’ and ‘illegitimate’ dictator but said that President Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela ‘do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable.’

‘Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable,’ Harris wrote. ‘That Maduro is a brutal, illegitimate dictator does not change the fact that this action was both unlawful and unwise. We’ve seen this movie before.

‘Wars for regime change or oil that are sold as strength but turn into chaos, and American families pay the price.’

Harris made the remarks hours after the Trump administration confirmed that Maduro and his wife were captured and transported out of Venezuela as part of ‘Operation Absolute Resolve.’

The former vice president also accused the administration of being motivated by oil interests rather than efforts to combat drug trafficking or promote democracy.

‘The American people do not want this, and they are tired of being lied to. This is not about drugs or democracy. It is about oil and Donald Trump’s desire to play the regional strongman,’ Harris said. ‘If he cared about either, he wouldn’t pardon a convicted drug trafficker or sideline Venezuela’s legitimate opposition while pursuing deals with Maduro’s cronies.’

Harris, who has been rumored as a potential Democratic contender in the 2028 presidential race, additionally accused the president of endangering U.S. troops and destabilizing the region.

‘The President is putting troops at risk, spending billions, destabilizing a region, and offering no legal authority, no exit plan, and no benefit at home,’ she said. ‘America needs leadership whose priorities are lowering costs for working families, enforcing the rule of law, strengthening alliances, and — most importantly — putting the American people first.’

Maduro and his wife arrived at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn late Saturday after being transported by helicopter from the DEA in Manhattan after being processed.

Earlier in the day, Trump said that the U.S. government will ‘run’ Venezuela ‘until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.’

Harris’ office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr contributed to this report.

With Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro extracted from Caracas on Jan. 3, Venezuelans and the world are anxious to learn about the future that awaits.

In a press conference following the Maduro operation on Saturday, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. is ‘going to run the country’ until a transition can be safely made.

Isaias Medina, an international lawyer and former senior Venezuelan diplomat, said a peaceful transition is vital for the 9 million to 10 million Venezuelans who are forcibly displaced and living in exile. Medina, who resigned his diplomatic post in protest against Maduro’s rule in 2017, told Fox News Digital that exiled Venezuelans ‘have been preparing ourselves to go back to rebuild our nation.’

With support from international organizations like the Organization of American States, Medina said the most important next step for Venezuela is to establish a transitional government that can restore the rule of law and rebuild institutions that have been decimated under the Maduro regime. Setting in place free and fair elections is particularly important, Medina said, noting that it’s ‘a legal obligation owed to [Venezuela’s] people, because on their occupied territory, it was never equitable or really free.’

Under Maduro, Medina said that ‘there was no separation of powers, there was no rule of law, there was not even sovereignty.’ Instead, Medina said Venezuela had an occupied territory extensively influenced by terrorist and trafficking organizations Hamas, Hezbollah, the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). He said these groups were exploiting Venezuelan resources.

David Daoud, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that so long as Venezuela poses no threat to U.S. national security, the ‘ideal situation’ for Venezuela ‘would be American guidance for determined local action.’ 

‘The best we can shepherd Venezuela to be is a productive member of the family of nations, and that’s something that we can help with a softer touch, without boots on the ground,’ Daoud said. ‘I don’t think we need to be in the business of trying to create Jeffersonian democracies anywhere.’

Following Maduro’s ouster, Daoud said the level of chaos allowed to exist inside Venezuela will determine whether terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas will be able to continue operating there. ‘It would really depend — does the day after in Venezuela create a stable state that is able to properly exercise control over all its territory, is interested in implementing the rule of law, is not corrupt. That would make things very, very complicated, if not impossible, for Hezbollah to operate, at least in the way it has been operating for a decade-plus, ever since the linkage between it and the original Chávez regime came about.’

Going forward, Medina suggested that the country will also have to manage guerrilla forces like the colectivos, violent groups of Venezuelans who were armed and trained with old U.S. and Russian military weapons. Medina said having these guerrillas ‘return the weapons for freedom’ could help to ‘unite the nation under one banner of development and evolution… so that we can have a country that really meets the expectations, not only of the riches that it has, but of the people and the development of their education and training and jobs, because it has been completely destroyed by design.’

Though the road ahead is uncertain, Medina is filled with hope. ‘What we have ahead of us is a great journey to be able to build upon the ruins of what this regime left us. But I think we’re going to become stronger, and this is the moment. The time has come,’ Medina said.

It can fairly be said that the most precarious jobs in the world are those of a golf ball collector at a driving range, a mascot at a Chuck E. Cheese and a Trump administration lawyer.

That was evident at the press conference yesterday as President Donald Trump blew apart the carefully constructed narrative presented earlier for the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Some of us had written that Trump had a winning legal argument by focusing on the operation as the seizure of two indicted individuals in reliance on past judicial rulings, including the decisions in the case of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stayed on script and reinforced this narrative. Both repeatedly noted that this was an operation intended to bring two individuals to justice and that law enforcement personnel were part of the extraction team to place them in legal custody. Rubio was, again, particularly effective in emphasizing that Maduro was not the head of state but a criminal dictator who took control after losing democratic elections.

However, while noting the purpose of the capture, Trump proceeded to declare that the United States would engage in nation-building to achieve lasting regime change. He stated that they would be running Venezuela to ensure a friendly government and the repayment of seized U.S. property dating back to the government of Maduro’s mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

This city is full of self-proclaimed Trump whisperers who rarely score above random selection in their predictions. However, there are certain pronounced elements in Trump’s approach to such matters. First, he is the most transparent president in my lifetime, with prolonged (at times excruciatingly long) press conferences and a brutal frankness about his motivations. Second, he is unabashedly and undeniably transactional in most of his dealings. He is not ashamed to state what he wants the country to get out of the deal.

In Venezuela, he wants a stable partner, and he wants oil.

Chávez and Maduro had implemented moronic socialist policies that reduced one of the most prosperous nations to an economic basket case. They brought in Cuban security thugs to help keep the population under repressive conditions, as a third fled to the United States and other countries.

After an extraordinary operation to capture Maduro, Trump was faced with socialist Maduro allies on every level of the government. He is not willing to allow those same regressive elements to reassert themselves.

The problem is that, if the purpose was regime change, this attack was an act of war, which is why Rubio struggled to bring the presser back to the law enforcement purpose. I have long criticized the erosion of the war declaration powers of Congress, including my representation of members of Congress in opposition to Obama’s Libyan war effort.

The fact, however, is that we lost that case. Trump knows that. Courts have routinely dismissed challenges to undeclared military offensives against other nations. In fairness to Trump, most Democrats were as quiet as church mice when Obama and Hillary Clinton attacked Libya’s capital and military sites to achieve regime change without any authorization from Congress. They were also silent when Obama vaporized an American under this ‘kill list’ policy without even a criminal charge. So please spare me the outrage now.

My strong preferences for congressional authorization and consultation are immaterial. The question I am asked as a legal analyst is whether this operation would be viewed as lawful. The answer remains yes.

The courts have previously upheld the authority of presidents to seize individuals abroad, including the purported heads of state. This case is actually stronger in many respects than the one involving Noriega. Maduro will now make the same failed arguments that Noriega raised. He should lose those challenges under existing precedent. If courts apply the same standards to Trump (which is often an uncertain proposition), Trump will win on the right to seize Maduro and bring him to justice.

But then, how about the other rationales rattled off at Mar-a-Lago? In my view, it will not matter. Here is why:

The immediate purpose and result of the operation was to capture Maduro and to bring him to face his indictment in New York. That is Noriega 2.0. The administration put him into custody at the time of extraction with law enforcement personnel and handed him over to the Justice Department for prosecution.

The Trump administration can then argue that it had to deal with the aftermath of that operation and would not simply leave the country without a leader or stable government. Trump emphasized, ‘We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.’

I still do not like the import of those statements. Venezuelans must be in charge of their own country and our role, if any, must be to help them establish a democratic and stable government. Trump added, ‘We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind.’

The devil is in the details. Venezuelans must decide who has their best interests in mind, not the United States.

However, returning to the legal elements, I do not see how a court could free Maduro simply because it disapproves of nation-building. Presidents have engaged in such policies for years. The aftermath of the operation is distinct from its immediate purpose. Trump can argue that, absent countervailing action from Congress, he has the authority under Article II of the Constitution to lay the foundation for a constitutional and economic revival in Venezuela.

He will leave it to his lawyers to make that case. It is not the case that some of us preferred, but it is the case that he wants to be made. He is not someone who can be scripted. It is his script and he is still likely to prevail in holding Maduro and his wife for trial.