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AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations Security Council is holding an emergency meeting today after U.S. forces attacked Venezuela on Saturday and abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in what many described as a “kidnapping.” Delta Force troops seized Maduro and his wife from a military base in Caracas. The two have been flown to New York, where they’re appearing in a Manhattan federal court today to face drug and weapons charges. The U.S. attack reportedly killed about 80 people, including 32 Cubans, in Venezuela.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other world leaders criticized the U.S. attack. Lula wrote on X, quote, “The bombings on Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president [cross] an unacceptable line. These acts represent a grave affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty and yet another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community,” Lula said.
Major questions remain about what comes next in Venezuela. On Saturday, President Trump said the U.S. will “run” Venezuela.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So, we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.
AMY GOODMAN: Trump also said the U.S. will take the oil from Venezuela, which has the world’s largest reserves of crude oil.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The oil companies are going to go in. They’re going to spend money. They’re going to — we’re going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago.
AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to walk back Trump’s comments about U.S. plans to run Venezuela. But on Sunday night, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that the U.S. is already in charge.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re dealing with the people. We’re dealing with the people that just got sworn in. And don’t ask me who’s in charge, because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial.
REPORTER: What does that mean?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It means we’re in charge.
REPORTER: Have you spoken with her?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re in charge.
REPORTER: Have you spoken with her?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No. No, I haven’t, but other people have.
REPORTER: Do you want to?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, at the right time I will.
AMY GOODMAN: In Caracas, Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, is being sworn in today as Venezuela’s interim president. On Saturday, she denounced the abduction of Maduro, but on Sunday posted a message on Instagram saying her government is ready to work with the U.S. In an interview with The Atlantic magazine, Trump threatened Rodríguez, saying, quote, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump said.
On Sunday, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino warned the U.S. may attack other countries in Latin America.
VLADIMIR PADRINO LÓPEZ: [translated] The Bolivarian National Armed Forces firmly rejects the cowardly kidnapping of citizen Nicolás Maduro, constitutional president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, our commander-in-chief, and his wife, the first lady, Dr. Cilia Flores de Maduro, an act carried out yesterday, Saturday, January 3rd, after cold-bloodedly murdering a large part of his security team, soldiers and innocent civilians. This represents severely a threat against the global order. If today was against Venezuela, tomorrow it can be against any state, any country.
AMY GOODMAN: Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino.
Over the past two days, Trump has threatened to take action against Cuba, Colombia and Mexico.
We’re going to spend the rest of the hour talking about Venezuela. We begin in Caracas, where we’re joined by Andreína Chávez, reporter based there. Her recent piece for Drop Site News, “’War of the entire people’: Venezuela’s Grassroots Rise to Resist Trump’s Naval Blockade.” That was before the U.S. bombed Venezuela and abducted the president and his wife.
Andreína Chávez, thank you so much for being back with Democracy Now! Can you talk about the response on the ground, overall? Though we spoke on Saturday in an extended discussion. If you can talk about who the people are, who they are saying now are in charge, like Delcy Rodríguez, and the response to the overall attack? We now understand about 80 people died in the process of the U.S.’s abduction of the president.
ANDREÍNA CHÁVEZ: Yes. So, thank you so much for having me again.
And just to give you a small recap of events, today is January 5. Two days ago, on January 3rd, Venezuela was attacked by the United States. We suffered several strikes, several bombings on the ground, on civilian populations, on military sites and also on electrical facilities. So, we suffered in Caracas. We woke up around 2 a.m. to the sound of very loud explosions. The fear was indescribable. We realized very quickly that we were being attacked by the United States. We now know that they bombed at least seven places in Caracas only, the capital. They also bombed additional places in La Guaira, Miranda, Aragua.
In Caracas specifically, what we have seen so far is that some electrical facilities have also been affected by U.S. bombs, and there are now at least dozens of Venezuelan communities, neighborhoods, popular neighborhoods, who are without light, without electricity, and the national company is just trying to fix that problem. Of course, it’s going to be very difficult, because an entire — entire electrical facilities were destroyed by U.S. missiles. So, that’s what happened.
Right now what is going on on the ground is that the Venezuelan people are just going to the streets in an organized way. They are protesting against the U.S. bombings. They are protesting against the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Yesterday, I went to a rally that happened right here in Caracas very near to the Miraflores Palace. People, once again, they were denouncing that U.S. bombings against Venezuela is an imperialist attack, is an unjustified military aggression. They were demanding that President Maduro, his wife are returned to Venezuela. And they were completely rejecting the narrative that Venezuela needed to be bombed in order to supposedly take down a drug trafficking organization. That is not true, and the Venezuelan people reject the notion that the Venezuelan government was in any way related to drug trafficking.
We all know that the Trump administration has been lying about this. We have seen it when they have been bombing vessels on the Caribbean and killing civilians without any proof that those vessels, those small boats on the Caribbean were actually carrying drugs. So, we have seen them kill people in the Caribbean without any evidence, without seizing any drugs. And they’re doing the same against Caracas. They’re doing the same against the Venezuelan government. They are pushing these false charges against President Maduro, a false indictment against him, in order to justify what they want, which is a regime change. And that is the bottom line. What is happening in Venezuela right now is an attempt at regime change.
And right now we have an acting president, which is Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. She is going to be in charge of the Venezuela executive office from now on. But it is very clear Delcy has said that Nicolás Maduro continues to be president of Venezuela. He is still the constitutionally elected president of Venezuela. She is going to be acting as the head of the executive office from now on. Exactly today, we have a meeting from the National Assembly, Venezuela’s legislative body. They’re going to swear in Delcy. They’re going to officialize that Delcy is now going to be in charge. And they’re also going to initiate a new legislative period in Venezuela. All of these elements, they ratify that Venezuela still has a government. We still have a Bolivarian government. We still have people in power who are facing the situation, who are calling people to resist.
And Delcy has said it many times now: Venezuela is not going to be a U.S. colony. Venezuela is open to dialogue with the United States. Venezuela is open to cooperation based on respect with the United States. And this is in line with Venezuelan foreign policy. Venezuela has always had a diplomacy of peace, which means that we have been calling the United States for years, since Hugo Chávez was president, to have bilateral relationships with Venezuela based on respect, to stop intervening in Venezuela and to respect Venezuela sovereignty. So, that is what we are seeing right now in Venezuela.
Of course, there are still — people still have fear that something else is going to happen. We know that Trump threatened to bomb Venezuela again. And something that I’ve been seeing, speaking to people, both in the rally and in the streets, is that people fear that there’s going to be more bombings, so people stay very cautious. I went — yesterday, I walked around the capital, and I saw people still buying food, buying water, just trying to feel safe somehow that they’re going to be able to resist any kind of attack against Venezuela in the coming days or weeks.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Andreína, I wanted to ask you, in terms of some of the pronouncements of Delcy Rodríguez now, who’s being sworn in as the interim president, appearing to give overtures to President Trump to try to have cooperation between Venezuela and the United States. What do you make of those comments of hers most recently?
ANDREÍNA CHÁVEZ: Yes, so, like I said, Delcy Rodríguez is not saying anything new. Venezuela has been claiming — has been asking the United States government, not only the Trump administration, but the Biden administration, the Obama administration, even the Bush administration back in the day — since the very beginning of the Bolivarian process, since Chávez took power, we have been asking the United States to enter into bilateral relations with Venezuela that are based on respect, that are based — that are based on sovereignty, that are based on the principle of nonintervention. So, this is in line with the Venezuelan foreign policy. Venezuela, it is a country that prioritizes diplomacy. And that is what Delcy was saying, that we are still open to have bilateral relations based on actual cooperation, based on actual respect as mutual sovereign nations.
So, of course, Delcy is following the line of President Maduro, who, even during these last few months, when the United States was threatening Venezuela, militarizing the Caribbean, bombing people in the Caribbean, President Maduro was still saying we’re open to dialogue, and we’re open to have cooperation with U.S. companies, such as Chevron. I mean, Venezuela has never been closed to the idea of not having any kind of economic or political cooperation with the United States. We just don’t want it to be on the base of them violating our sovereignty. So, that is what Delcy has been saying.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We’re speaking with Andreína Chávez, a reporter based in Caracas, in Venezuela. And we’re also speaking with two Venezuelan American professors, coming up, with Miguel Tinker Salas and Alejandro Velasco. And we’ll talk to Georgetown law professor David Cole, who says, “The invasion of Venezuela is not law enforcement; it is imperialism, pure and simple.” Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: The late, great Randy Weston playing the blues. To see his performance and our interview with him, go to democracynow.org.
