Democracy Now! Audio - Special Report on Venezuela: U.S. Kidnaps Maduro, Trump Says "We Are Going to Run" Oil-Rich Nation

Episode Date: January 3, 2026

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez host breaking news coverage on U.S. forces attacking Venezuela and seizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. We speak to Venezuelan reporter Andreína Chávez in Caracas as well as professors Miguel Tinker Salas and Alejandro Velasco.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We're breaking in with this news. The United States has seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro after U.S. forces launched what President Trump called a large-scale attack. Maduro and his wife were flown out of Venezuela, expected to be brought to New York. They've been criminally charged. Just before we recorded this, President Trump spoke saying, we're going to run the country until such time we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition. An interview with Fox, Trump said the U.S. will be very strongly involved in the Venezuelan oil industry. Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves. It's unclear how many

Venezuelans were killed in the operation, which was carried out with the help of the CIA and U.S. Delta Force soldiers. The U.S. attack has been widely criticized around the world. The Brazilian President Luisina Sia Lula da Silva wrote on X, the bombings on Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president draw an unacceptable line. They cross an unacceptable line. These acts represent a grave a front to Venezuela's sovereignty and yet another extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community, unquote. Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the attack as a clear violation of Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations. Congress member Greg Kasar, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote, Trump has no right to take us to war with Venezuela. This is

reckless and illegal, Congress should vote immediately on a war powers resolution to stop him, Congressmember Casar said. We're joined right now by Miguel Tinker Salas, Emeritus Professor of History at Pomona College in Claremont. He is the author of the enduring legacy, oil, culture, and society in Venezuela, as well as Venezuela, what everyone needs to know. We're all also joined on the ground in Caracas by Andreina Chavez, reporter there, her piece earlier this week for draft site news, war of the entire people. But before we go to our guests, Juan Gonzalez, you were there in Panama. It was 35 years ago today that Manuel Noriega was seized by U.S. forces and brought to the United States. And it's a month after.

after President Trump pardoned a man who was convicted in this country of narco-trafficking, the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez. Your thoughts? Yes, Amy. Well, this is an extraordinary moment in what is clearly, by international law, a completely illegal military action by the United States. But in listening to the press conference that President Trump and his top aides held just a little while ago, a few things stand out to me. One is the size of this attack, and we didn't really get a sense of that until General Dan Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has had an opportunity to talk.

and he mentioned over 150 of the most advanced military aircraft of the United States participated in this basically an Air Force invasion of Venezuela. In addition to the Delta Force and CIA operatives that were on the ground, a blackout of Caracas that the United States triggered in order to be able to operate in complete darkness and the admission by both the general and President Trump that there was a lot of opposition of Venezuelan forces on the ground to the U.S. attack. That's one thing, the size of this attack. The second, as you mentioned, is Trump's claim that the United States is going to run Venezuela from now on, and that this was not just a question of extracting Maduro for supposed

alleged drug crimes, but also a regime change operation that the United States is going to directly run Venezuela. And I thought the most interesting thing of all was Trump's claim late in the press conference that Marco Rubio has been in conversations with the current vice presidents, Delci Rodriguez, and that according to Trump, she told Rubio, quote, will do whatever you need, as if implying that Delci Rodriguez, the vice president and clearly the successor to Maduro, was in some way or other agreeing to this U.S. intervention or at least acknowledging it. So I think that those are the three things that stuck out to me. We'll have to see in the next few hours and days to what degree some of these claims of

Trump are actually factual. Well, these developments of the last hours have been stunning. We want to go first to Caracas to Andreina Chavez. If you can talk about how people are responding, what we have seen, the images of different cities of Venezuela being bombed, attacked, a large-scale attack, as President Trump put it, by the United States. Yes, so first of all, I just want to say that President Nicolas Maduro, he wasn't captured, he wasn't seized, he wasn't arrested, he was kidnapped. This is a kidnapping. The United States has just kidnapped a constitutionally elected president. So this is something that it goes beyond our wild imagination. This is something terribly against international law, against all principles of sovereignty of self-determination of the people. So this is something that we need to clarify.

Second, these comments that President Trump and his government are saying that they are negotiating with the government of Venezuela, we should not believe those things. None of that has been confirmed. Vice President Delsi-Lodriguez, she has very clearly stated that the message right now is to resist. The message right now is to go to the streets, is to fight against this imperialist aggression, is to denounce this imperialist aggression. And there is no such transition or vacuum power happening right now. Right now we are fighting against this aggression. So we need to treat these claims by the government administration, mostly as psychological operations, to try to debilitate even more the Venezuelan government

that is still standing, that is still here. We need to remember that we still have a Venezuelan government, even though President Maduro has just been kidnapped. Second, as you said, we just experienced a quite horrifying night. We woke up around 2 a.m. to the sound of extremely loud explosions. Of course, at the moment, we didn't know what was happening. Everybody knew it was something terrible because it's something like an earthquake, like the sky was falling down.

I could shoot the planes. I couldn't see them, but I could hear the planes. I live very close to Miraflores. So I imagine that is why I could actually hear all these. this military operation happening around me. And we immediately got confirmation from the Venezuelan government that at least seven points of Caracas had been attacked, at least seven places between civilian places and military complex.

There were also attacks in places like Estado, La Guayra, Arawa, Miranda, all these places were attacked. After that, we got even more confirmation from the defense minister, Latimer Padino Lopez, who said that indeed we were under an imperialist military aggression from the United States, and that the call right now for the Venezuelan people was to just remain but also to remember that we need to fight back against this religion change, because at the end of the day, we need to remember that this is flaging change. We have to remember that the U.S. has been peddling a lie about Venezuela, about the Venezuelan government being a drug cartel,

about the Venezuelan government being involved in drug trafficking, using evidence that is not credible at all, using, not even using evidence. At the most, they're just using a court in New York to say that President Maduro is involved in narcotraffical without actually presenting evidence that he is doing that. There is actually not credible evidence that there is a Venezuelan state that is involved

in a high-structural drug trafficking corporation. That is not true. They have been using that life first to kill people in small vessels in the Caribbean, and now to bond Venezuela and to kidnap the Venezuelan president. So right now we're facing a regime change, and I think that is the first thing that people need to have in mind, that Venezuela is being born. We're facing a religion change. President Trump just said it.

He said that right now he's going to roam Venezuela. The United States has decided that they're going to control Venezuela from now. They're going to control Venezuela's oil business from our own. So if this was actually something about capturing a supposed narcotrafficking person, then why wouldn't that just mean that the Venezuelan government continues? We have a vice president who constitutionally is mandated to now take power. But no, he's not saying that. He's saying that anybody who remains loyal to the Bolivarian process is going to go down,

is saying that there might be more military operations. And he's saying that now the United States is going to assign people to control the Venezuelan government. And the first thing that is going to do is take power over the Venezuelan oil industry. And remember that he says the Venezuelan oil industry wasn't working right, that he was going to make it finally work right. But you need to remember that the Venezuelan oil industry has been under U.S. sanctions for almost a decade.

Let us bring Professor Tinker Salas into this conversation. You were born in Venezuela. Your books are about Venezuela. You woke up to this news as well. You're based right now in California. If you can respond to these points, and especially what Andreina is talking about, the U.S. will now run Venezuela until there are such time as there is a just transition. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State calling,

saying that Maduro was given plenty of chances to step down, but in fact he's a wild man, he said. The spectacle of that press conference is amazing. It looked like something out of a Hollywood movie set, a B-movie set. This is the Pirates of the Caribbean. This is Marco Rubio now the Viceroy of Venezuela. This is an effort to run Venezuela with 50s,

15,000 troops, that's utterly impossible. There is a government in Venezuela. There's a people in Venezuela. This was a kidnapping of a government in Venezuela. The reality is that we've seen this before. We've seen this in Panama. We've seen this throughout history of Latin America, whether in Nicaragua, whether Haiti, whether Mexico.

The reality here is very clearly Trump made this about oil. He says that what they do want to run is not the country. what they do want to run is the oil fields. And that's the central part of this discussion. I think we need to keep an eye on that ball. And I think that the other part of this is it's clearly a message internally for U.S. politics with a view towards midterm elections. The U.S. can impose its will.

We saw that clearly in the national security strategy documents that were revealed a couple of weeks ago, where the U.S. will control the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. will impose its will. The message is clear for Mexico. The message is clear for Brazil. message is clear for everywhere in Latin America. What we've seen here is an effort at regime change. And we heard this before. We heard this in Iraq when Bush said that the oil production in Iraq will pay for the intervention. Well, that didn't happen in Iraq and it won't happen in

Venezuela. This is about regime change. This is about establishing U.S. dominance. This is about the U.S. regaining control and excluding China and Russia. And imagine what Putin must be thinking or Ziping about zones of influence, well, if the U.S. can exert its role in the Caribbean, well, why shouldn't Russia exert this role in Ukraine? Why shouldn't China exert its role in Taiwan? The dimensions of this are incredible, and I think this is an unreal act at a time where the countries of the Latin America now will be threatened. Miguel, I wanted to ask you repeatedly during the press conference president, Trump talked about, and he has said so now for weeks, that Venezuela stole our oil, stole

the U.S. oil and that the United States is getting it back. Could you talk about some of this history, because this is a complete fabrication of what the historical record. The main nationalization of Venezuelan oil occurred not under Maduro, not under Chavez, or any the Bolivarian Revolution, Socialist Revolution, but occurred in 1976 under Carlos Andres Perez. And it was only Chavez that then further move forward on the nationalization. Can you talk about that history and how this is a complete misrepresentation of what has happened with Venezuela? Venezuela knew the existence of oil before the Europeans or the Americans arrived. The very first oil industry was 1870s in the Alkitran and the state of Tachira,

where Venezuelans ran their own oil operation. They exploited it. They developed it. Having no infrastructure, they really couldn't promote it. And the lack of internal combustion engines meant that they couldn't really develop it. The oil was discovered profusely in 1920, in Cabimas, in La Rosa. It was run by, at that time, British and Dutch companies, Venezuela eventually nationalized its oil industry in 1975. taken effect in 1976. It was controlled by Venezuelans. It was run by Venezuelans. And it was fully compensated. The American companies and the Dutch companies and the American companies and the British were fully compensated much above and beyond what they had already extracted out of the ground

in huge amounts of profits. For Exxon Mobil, for example, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, Creole Petroleum was its most profitable subsidiary. It maintained that entire operation of standard oil, which is Terry Exxon Mobil. What Chavez did in 19, and 2006 and 7 was to close the back door that was left open in Article 5 of the reform for nationalization in 1976, which had allowed existing oil companies to proceed in Venezuela as partners in operating with PEDA BESA. He imposed on those companies the joint ventures, but they had to include PEDAVESA, which is the Venezuelan Petroleum Corporation.

So Trump is utterly wrong, utterly lying when he says that the oil companies were stolen from the Americans. They were fully compensated. They had received compensation over and over and over, in addition to what they had extracted in profits out of Venezuela previously. But we go back to the old Juan Pablo Perez-Alfonso, the minister of the petroleum in Venezuela in the 1960s, that said oil is the excrement of the devil. And once again, Trump has proven that. And Adriana, I can see that you've been nodding your head from Caracas. If you can talk about what President Trump said that the oil companies will be funding this, and also the Nobel Peace laureate Machado, who is outside the country right now, what this means.

Where she is, they said they are not bringing her back right now, and that Marco Rubio Andrina, has been talking with Dulce Rodriguez, as you pointed out. Yes, so there's this claim that Michael Lopio has been talking with El Salvador DeRigate, and as I said before, we don't have actual confirmation that that is happening. They have also claimed that they were negotiating with President Maduro. They have made a lot of claims, and we know now those are not true. If there was any kind of negotiation with President Maduro, then they wouldn't have kidnapped him in the middle of the night.

while bombing the entire country. So we know that the United States government lies, either because they want to create this psychological operation against the people or because it is convenient for them to lie so people don't actually figure out what is that they're doing. So there's no confirmation that there's any kind of negotiation happening, either with Elsie Rodriguez, who's the vice president, or other key figures in the government.

All we know right now is that the government figures that are still standing, they are calling the people to resist and to go to the streets and to fight back against this regime change operation. And of course, I just came from near Miraflores. I was in a protest. People were there taking turns to speak on the microphone, and every single person were saying, we are not giving up.

We are not giving up. We are going to demand that President Maduro is brought back. We're going to demand that we have proof of life of President Maduro and his wife, Syria, Flores. So people are not just waiting to see what plans the United States has for Venezuela. People are actually fighting against them and denouncing very publicly in the streets saying this is not acceptable. We do not accept this because we elected a president and the United States doesn't have any kind of authority to decide that Maduro has to be kidnapped and that now they're going to appoint some kind of junta like the dictatorships

from the past to now run Venezuela. When it comes to Maria Corrina Machado, we don't really, they have been very careful not to mention her. And I think that that proves that in a lot of ways, they were actually sort of inflating her figure, trying to pose her at this kind of natural opposition figure who needed to take power in Venezuela eventually,

but I don't think they were actually that committed to Maria Corina Machado, because ultimately they don't care. They just care about whoever, even if it's just a bunch of Venezuelans living in the United States, learning the country, they don't care if it's Maria Corrina-Macharo. They just care that is someone that is friendly to U.S. interest. So Marie-Corona-Machado might as well not be that involved in the whole equation, or she might be in the future as we all know Maria-Curino-Bachado has been very vocal about wanting the United States to invade Venezuela, to attack Venezuela,

she has been very vocal about being available to run Venezuela herself and treat Venezuela as some kind of, and she said it herself, she has, this is her actual word, she said that Venezuela is a sexy woman and she's ready to just give this sexy woman to the world, meaning that she is willing to open up Venezuela's oil industry, oil research, all our natural resources to U.S. corporations. And as Miguel was saying, it is indeed completely false that the Venezuelan government, the Chavez government back then ever took away these sides from U.S. corporations, that's not true. They were compensated. There were some corporations like Exomobile and ConocoPhillips who simply decided that they didn't want to respect Venezuelan sovereignty.

They didn't want to respect the fact that the Venezuelan state wanted to have a majority control. in our own oil research, in our oil joint ventures. So they decided to leave Venezuela. They abandoned their oil projects. And now they are trying to fabricate this narrative that somehow that means that they were stolen. And they were not. The St.J.O.S.O.R.R.E.S.G.O., that they were used to

exploding Venezuela, however they wanted, without actually giving anything back to the Venezuelan people, and now they want to do the same. And that's what before Trump just said. Andreina, I wanted to ask you in terms of what you have heard there in Venezuela from the other key leaders of the country around Maduro, specifically of Vladimir Padino Lopez, the defense minister, Jorge Rodriguez, the president of the National Assembly, and the brother of the vice president, Delci Rodriguez, and also Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister. These are considered the key figures. around Maduro, have any of them made announcements other than Delci Rodriguez, the interview she did on a radio program by phone where she called for people to resist? Yes, so defense minister Vladimir Parina López, he was the first one to actually

give a live statement, a video statement, in which he told the people that indeed will be an attack by the U.S. He said that not only the military sites were being strike, but also civilians population. He said that the army was ready to fight back, that they were mobilized, that they were outside, that they were taking charge, that they were monitoring the entire country. He called people to the mankind to not believe any of these wild claims and psychological operations that are going around. And of course, he advised that we need to stick to the troops.

We need to stick to the source, which is the Venezuelan government. Right now, there are a lot of mainstream media outlets and just people on social media, claiming a lot of things, publishing photos that are edited, that are AI. So we need to try to focus on who are the people who actually can give us information and those are the Venezuelan government. Besides Padrina Lopez, we also had Diosda LoCadeo. He was on the streets. From the moment this started happening,

Justato Cadeo and his group of people, they went to the streets. And he gave a declaration from the streets, telling to people that, indeed, we just were victims of this horrifying attack. And he asked people to trust the Venezuelan government. He said, trust your authorities, trust your leaders. We are waiting this. We're handling the situation. We know this is terrible.

We know this is bad. But we're going to fight back. So these key figures in the Venezuelan government, And they have stated very clearly that they are not giving up. There is no chance that they are actually negotiating anything with the U.S. government. They are on the streets. They are fighting back and they are advising people to do the same. Juan, I'm wondering if you can talk about this was not limited to a discussion about Venezuela, Trump's News Conference.

They also talked about Cuba. if you could summarize as well as Miguel Tinker Salas about what exactly President Trump is saying what his designs are. Well, I think it's very clear. We saw that in the national security document earlier on. We saw clearly in the Western Hemisphere approach. That is, the U.S. wants to reimpose itself. It talked about a new Monroe doctrine. To me, it's more like the big stick diplomacy, which is the U.S. will replace whatever government it wants to in the region. whenever it wants to. The message is clear to any progressive forces in Latin America. The message is clear to Brazil. The message is clear to Mexico and Claudia Scheinbaum. The message is clear to Cuba that it will be in the crosshairs next.

This is about reimposing U.S. military and economic dominance in Latin America, starting in the Caribbean, starting with Venezuela. But the message is very clearly sent to Cuba, to Mexico, to Nicaragua, to any progressive government. And it's also a message of support for the conservative right-wing governments of the region. It's a support for the president of Chile, its support for the president of Ecuador, for the president of Argentina. When Chuck talked about the president said he has endorsed, have won. So what he's trying to create as a new coalition of the willing, or in this case of the countries of right Latin America that have gone to the right and impose the U.S. will,

but underscoring, again, national hegemony of the international hegemony of the U.S., economic supremacy, being able to extract all its minerals for the region, talking about oil, so dominating oil is central

to what Trump is talking about. And very clearly, as you pointed out, through Maria Corina Machado under the bus, saying she doesn't have a support, she will not govern, they will govern. So she was being manipulated

the same way that Venezuela is being manipulated right now. And, Amy, I think one quote from Trump's press conference summed it up for me pretty concisely. He said at one point, and I'm quoting his words, American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be doubted again. This reminds me of the infamous George Bush proclamation, mission accomplished. in the invasion of Iraq, it's very easy for the U.S. military to invade or intervene in a country. It is a lot harder to actually force people to do masses of people, millions of people, to do what you want. And so this is not the climax of the long-running struggle between

oppression and resistance in Latin America. This is actually just another chapter in and what will be a long-running saga that we're going to, that's going to unfold over the next months and possibly years. And Juan, before we wrap up, you were in Panama as a reporter 35 years ago. It was 35 years ago today, January 3rd, that the U.S. took Manuel Noriega forcibly from his country and brought him to the United States. If you can talk about those comparisons, and then again, we cannot forget, it's been a month since President Trump pardoned a man who is convicted of narco-trafficking, the former president

of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, sentenced to 45 years in prison. His brother, Tony Hernandez, is already serving a life sentence in the United States. Yeah, well, I think it's clear. I remember spending both Christmas and New Year's of 19, of that period, 1990 in Panama and watching the U.S. invasion. There was a difference there in that the U.S. was already in Panama. It had military bases in the Panama Canal zone. So the invasion was really was a lot easier for the United States. to accomplish then. Here we've seen the build-up now for months of military forces in the Caribbean

and all of the attacks on boats and the blockades before and the ordering of all aircraft not to fly into Venezuela. So this was a much bigger build-up. Venezuela is a far larger country. The people of Venezuela are much more politically conscious and organized. than were the people of Panama. And so, as I said earlier, this is not going to be a repetition of the Panama invasion that it ends it, it ends pretty quickly. We're going to see a long, drawn-out struggle in Venezuela and the rest of Latin America in one way or another will have to become involved and take sides in these actions, for or against the actions of the United States. Well, I want to thank everyone for spending this time and a correction. It was 36 years ago today that Manuel Norega was taken by the United States from Panama to the United States. I want to thank all our guests for being with us, Miguel Tinkarsalis, a emeritus professor of history at Pomona College in Claremont, California, author of the Enduring Legacy, Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela. what everyone needs to know, and from the streets of, or in Caracas, just from the streets

of Caracas, Venezuela, Andreina Chavez, reporter who just came from the streets, who just recently wrote a piece for drop site news. And right before we go, I believe we've just been joined by Alejandro Velasco, who is an associate professor. at NYU, historian of modern Latin America, former executive director of NACLA report on the Americas, an author of Barrio Rising, Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela. He was born and raised in Venezuela.

Juan and I would like to ask you and welcome you, Alejandro Velasco, to this conversation, your response to this news that has developed over these last hours, through the night, the U.S. bombing of Venezuela, and then the dragging of the Venezuelan president, Maduro, and his wife from their beds. And now, as we speak, apparently, according to President Trump and those around him, is being taken to New York to be brought up on narco-trafficking charges. Your thoughts as we wrap up this discussion? And it's, there's so many strands to this that are shocking.

And first, of course, it was just waking me up at 2.30 in the morning with friends and messages from family and friends about what's going on, then trying throughout the morning to be together, whether this was, you know, boots on the ground, large scale invasion or something else. Then finally realizing that there was a snatch and go operation and then asking the question, well, what are the larger intents? of the uh of the trump administration if it's not to actually affect regime change leaving the entire apparatus of the chavista maurista government in place and then of course the trump the trump press conference which basically just highlighted the extent to which the primary interest here is oil and venezuela's resources but then also marco rubio coming in and saying no no it's not about that it's about legality and you know indictments right and so you know right now my primary reaction is anxiety and stress and concern about the next few days and hours and when it's going

to mean. I will say one quick thing, which is that, you know, if somebody is presumably, you know, very unhappy right now, at least after the Trump press conference, it's Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Prize winner, who Trump seems to basically just thrown under the bus and said, like, no, we're willing to work with the structure that's in power right now as long as they play ball. and Maria Gordina-Machal hasn't really had the respect to the Venezuelan, you know, I think he probably meant the Venezuelan state. And so, you know, that is a big question. What's going to happen to that hardline Venezuelan opposition? Alejandro, what are you going to be looking for right now?

As people across the world, world leaders, we just read comments, for example, from Brazil, from Mexico, are condemning this move. What is most important do you feel right now? Right. Two things. The first one is what's happening with the rest of the Venezuelan government and its high officials? Are they, in fact, in place? Are they speaking, negotiating back channel with the Trump administration to stay in place to safeguard some kind of transition? Or is the next move on the part of the Trump administration to pressure them as well to leave the country and to seed path to something else? So that's on the one thing. On the one hand, on the other hand, the big question is, what's the U.S. Congress going to do? This was such an explicitly anti-constitutional, illegal operation that they're masquerading as a legal, you know, process, law enforcement, but it's clearly a military operation for which there was no authority.

And so those are the two major things. Congress wants to respond and how is the Venezuelan, what remains of the Venezuelan government going to respond. Well, thank you so much for being with us at the end of this conversation. Alejandro Velasco, associate professor of NYU, historian of modern Latin America, and former executive editor of NACLA report on the Americas, author of the book Barrio Rising, urban, popular politics, and the making of modern Venezuela. This is Democracy Now. Tune in on Monday for a regular broadcast on Internet. on TV, on radio, on social media.

I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez with this breaking news.