Trump signals long road ahead in Venezuela in his boldest interventionist move yet
President Donald Trump is setting the stage for the U.S. to be involved in overseeing Venezuela for a significant period of time, after conducting strikes and capturing dictator Nicolás Maduro...
By Fox News · Fox News
President Donald Trump is setting the stage for the U.S. to be involved in overseeing Venezuela for a significant period of time, after conducting strikes and capturing dictator Nicolás Maduro and labeling himself "acting" president of Venezuela. The move marks his boldest interventionist move yet — a foreign policy approach by which one country intervenes in another state's affairs — and follows other major military operations from the Trump administration , including strikes in Syria in December 2025 against Islamic State operatives after an ambush against U.S. troops there, and strikes in June 2025 against the Iranian nuclear sites of Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. Trump told The New York Times in an interview that was published Wednesday that "only time will tell" how long the U.S. will be running Venezuela, but said it would be "much longer" than a year. Additionally, Trump announced recently that Venezuela's interim government would hand over up to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. and that the oil would be sold "immediately." TRUMP DISCUSSES EXPANSION OF DRUG CARTEL CRACKDOWN, ISSUES GRIM WARNING TO IRAN "We will rebuild it in a very profitable way," Trump told the Times. "We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil. We’re getting oil prices down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need." Likewise, Trump shared a doctored image that looked like a Wikipedia page that identified him as "Acting President of Venezuela" since January 2026. Previous interventionist actions the U.S. has taken include launching an invasion of Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attacks Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda conducted against the U.S., and an invasion of Iraq in 2003 that led to the toppling of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. In both cases, the U.S. remained in prolonged occupations there. The language the Trump administration is using now focusing on illegal migration is different than what was used during the Afgh…