The outcome has left opposition supporters uncertain about the path to democratic transition. The Trump administration’s decision to work with Rodríguez rather than the opposition — whose leaders documented a 2-to-1 election victory over Maduro in 2024 — has produced no announced election timeline and raised questions about whether constitutional requirements will be honored.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s opposition leaders find themselves largely in exile or prison days after the U.S. military operation that seized President Nicolás Maduro, with Vice President Delcy Rodríguez governing in his stead after the Trump administration declined to back the country’s recognized opposition leadership.
Maduro, removed from his home on a military base in Caracas on Saturday and transferred to New York on federal drug trafficking charges, has been succeeded not by opposition figures but by members of his own administration. President Trump, in remarks to reporters after the operation, said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela and expressed doubt that opposition leader María Corina Machado could govern the country.
“She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country,” Trump said. “She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”
Machado — a Nobel Peace Prize recipient whose campaign collected detailed tally sheets showing opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia had defeated Maduro by a 2-to-1 margin in Venezuela’s disputed 2024 presidential election, a result the U.S. and other nations recognized — responded without directly addressing Trump’s dismissal of her leadership.
“I spoke with President Trump on Oct. 10, the same day the prize was announced, not since then,” Machado told Fox News on Monday in her first televised interview since Maduro’s capture. “What he has done as I said is historic, and it’s a huge step toward a democratic transition.”
Constitutional questions shadow transition
Venezuela’s constitution requires an election within 30 days when a president becomes “permanently unavailable” to serve — a provision followed when former President Hugo Chávez died of cancer in 2013. Venezuela’s Supreme Court ruled Saturday, however, that Maduro’s absence is “temporary.” Under that constitutional interpretation, the vice president — an unelected position — may assume the presidency for up to 90 days, extendable to six months with approval from the National Assembly, which is controlled by the ruling party.
The court’s ruling made no mention of the 180-day limit, according to the Associated Press, fueling speculation that Rodríguez could seek to hold power longer as she works to unify ruling-party factions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Sunday interviews, walked back Trump’s assertion that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela. Rubio said Washington would instead use control of Venezuela’s oil industry — the country holds the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves — to press for policy changes, and called the current Venezuelan government illegitimate.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and close Trump ally who traveled with the president on Air Force One on Sunday, said Tuesday he expects a free election to occur but did not specify when.
“We’re going to build the country up – infrastructure wise – crescendoing with an election that will be free,” Graham told reporters.
Neither Trump nor Rodríguez has stated when, or whether, elections will take place.
Opposition faces steep obstacles
David Smilde, a Tulane University professor who has studied Venezuela for three decades, said the Trump administration was not persuaded that removing Maduro would swiftly produce a democratic transition.
“They were clearly unimpressed by the sort of ethereal magical realism of the opposition, about how if they just gave Maduro a push, it would just be this instant move toward democracy,” Smilde said.
Even if elections were announced, the opposition’s two leading figures would face the immediate challenge of returning to Venezuela. González has been in exile in Spain since September 2024. Machado left Venezuela last month to receive her Nobel Prize in Norway — her first public appearance in 11 months.
Machado on Monday described Rodríguez as “one of the main architects of torture, persecution, corruption, narco-trafficking … certainly not an individual that can be trusted by international investors.”
Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuela Observatory at Colombia’s Universidad del Rosario, said the Trump administration’s decision to work with Rodríguez rather than with the recognized opposition risks undermining the democratic momentum Venezuelans built in the 2024 election.
“What the opposition did in the 2024 election was to unite with a desire to transform the situation in Venezuela through democratic means, and that is embodied by María Corina Machado and, obviously, Edmundo González Urrutia,” he said. “To disregard that is to belittle, almost to humiliate, Venezuelans.”