US president made comments after US military special forces captured Venezuelan president and wife
Donald Trump has said the US will be “very strongly involved” in Venezuela’s oil industry after launching a military attack that swept the country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, from power.
The president gave a phone interview to the conservative Fox News channel hours after a dramatic pre-dawn assault on Caracas and the surrounding region ended in the capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Asked about the future of Venezuela’s oil industry, Trump replied: “We’re gonna be very strongly involved in it. That’s all. What can I say? We have the greatest oil companies in the world – the biggest, the greatest, and we’re going to be very much involved in it.”
Maduro, a 63-year-old former bus driver handpicked by the dying Hugo Chávez to succeed him in 2013, has accused the US of seeking to take control of his nation’s oil reserves, the biggest in the world.
