Interim Leader Tells Venezuela Maduro Remains Its President

Interim President Delcy Rodríguez delivered a defiant address to Venezuela on Saturday denouncing the US attack and declaring, "There is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros." Earlier in the day, President Trump said she had agreed to help US forces run her country after Maduro was removed and put on a ship to New York. Calling the US operation "an unprecedented military aggression," Rodríguez said it made clear that the goal is a regime change that would allow the US to seize Venezuela's "energy, mineral and natural resources," the New York Times reports. "This is the true objective, and the world and the international community must know it."

Rodríguez, who was sworn in Saturday as president, said she had convened a national council for the defense of the nation, a group including top government and military officials, per the Washington Post. During her televised speech, she introduced each official, and all of them nodded at Rodríguez as she demanded Maduro 's release and insisted that he remains the rightful president. When her speech ended, per the Times, the state broadcaster said Rodríguez is the nation's vice president who had just made clear that Maduro is still president.

Venezuela is willing to engage in a respectful relationship with the Trump administration, she said, if it's conducted within the framework of international and Venezuelan law. "If there is one thing that the Venezuelan people and this country are clear about," Rodríguez said, "it is that we will never again be slaves, that we will never again be a colony of any empire, whatever its nature."