Venezuela's leader is out. Now what?
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With ousted Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in a New York jail, President Trump says the U.S. will run his country now. The legality, practicality, and morality of regime change in Venezuela.
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| 0:34.1 | WBUR Podcasts, Boston. |
| 0:43.9 | This is on point. |
| 0:45.0 | I'm Megna Chakrabardi. |
| 0:50.8 | Venezuela's former president, Nicholas Maduro, is imprisoned in New York and awaiting trial. |
| 0:56.1 | Of the many questions remaining in the wake of the U.S. military seizure of Maduro is this. Who is running the country now? Well, President Trump immediately addressed that on |
| 1:02.6 | Saturday at Mar-a-Lago. We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, |
| 1:09.5 | proper, and judicious transition. |
| 1:12.8 | Well, the vague answer prompted follow-up from reporters who wanted to know who is the we and |
| 1:18.0 | what is the plan. |
| 1:19.8 | Well, it's largely going to be for a period of time of the people that are standing right |
| 1:24.4 | behind me. |
| 1:25.4 | And standing directly behind the president and squarely within the camera's view, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. |
| 1:32.2 | He followed up by warning the international community that Trump is a president who does what he says, |
| 1:38.0 | and that nations should not be, quote, playing games with him. |
| 1:41.3 | But the question of what's the plan now persists. On Sunday's |
| 1:46.4 | Meet the Press, Rubio answered the question this way. |
| 1:48.8 | Let's be realistic here. What we are focused on right now is all of the problems we had |
| 1:54.6 | when Maduro was there, we still have those problems in terms of them needing to be addressed. |
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