Venezuela will not have new elections in the next 30 days, U.S. President Donald Trump told NBC News in an interview on Jan. 5. “We have to fix the country first. You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote,” Trump said about the possibility of a vote in the next month. “No, it’s going to take a period of time. We have—we have to nurse the country back to health.”
Part of “nursing” Venezuela “back to health” may include the U.S. subsidizing an effort by U.S. oil companies to rebuild Venezuelan oil infrastructure, a project Trump claimed could take less than 18 months. “I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” he said. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”
Trump also named Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, and Vice President JD Vance as part of a group that will oversee U.S. involvement in Venezuela."It’s a group of all. They all have different expertise,” he said. But he had a one-word answer for who is ultimately in charge: “Me.”
