RUNNING MAN: Two days after the precision military snatch and grab that brought Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife to the US on charges of terrorism and narco-trafficking, there’s little coherent word on what comes next for Venezuela.

  Maduro is being held in Brooklyn and could appear in federal court today.

  Creating a headline bigger that news of the assault itself, President Trump said during his lengthy Saturday press conference that the US will, “run” Venezuela “until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.” But backing away from that only a day later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday talk shows that the US would “run” Venezuela only through coercive policies.

   In a testy exchange on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Rubio complained that critics were “fixating” on Trump’s declaration that the US government would run Venezuela. “It’s not running — it’s running policy, the policy with regards to this,” he said.

  That’s not what Trump said on Saturday. Asked who would be running Venezuela he said: “It’s all being, it’s all being done right now. We’re designating people. We’re talking to people. We’re designating, uh, various people, and we’re gonna let you know who those people are.”

    As many as 40 Venezuelan soldiers and citizens were killed in the operation. Some Americans were wounded, but none killed. In one of his usual superlatives, Trump said on Saturday that, “We’re a respected country again like, maybe, like never before.”

  Trump said the Maduros were taken in their pajamas just as they were closing the door on a steel safe room. But the country’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez stepped up to power and, despite Trump’s claim that she was cooperating with the US, immediately demanded Maduro’s release. 

  Yesterday Trump said about Rodríguez that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” The US did not leave troops in Venezuela to enforce its will but a naval armada and 15,000 troops are standing by in the Caribbean.

  Trump has claimed that Maduro has not been the legitimate leader of Venezuela because the proxy candidate for opposition leader Maria Corina Machado actually won the country’s last election. Asked whether Machado would be brought back to serve, Trump said, “Oh, I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader if she doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within the country.” 

  So this might not be a regime change, just an oil change. Trump gave as much weight to getting Venezuelan oil as he did to cutting off the flow of drugs, the purported reason for toppling Maduro.  Venezuela has 17 percent of the world’s oil reserves and produces only 1 percent. The President said, “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” Doing that would require either a welcome reception in Venezuela, or a US military occupation. 

  Trump said, “We are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so, so we were prepared to do a second wave if we needed to do so.” 

  Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has turned against Trump, posted on Twitter/X that, “This is a clear move for control over Venezuelan oil supplies that will ensure stability for the next obvious regime change war in Iran.”

  Trump cited the historical 1823 Monroe Doctrine that sought to establish US influence over the Western Hemisphere. As he withdraws from Europe Trump is trying to re-establish that. “They now call it the ‘Donroe Doctrine,’” he said on Saturday, once again treating this as a branding opportunity. There is no “they.” It’s Trump who calls it that.

EYE ON NEWS: The new anchor for the CBS Evening News, Tony Dokoupil, took the chair two days early for a special report on the Venezuela operation. Dokoupil gave over much of the broadcast to an unchallenging interview with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who blustered about the excellence and lethality of American troops as well as the decisiveness of President Trump.

  Dokoupil did not press about how Trump will “run” Venezuela or follow up when Hegseth spoke about Venezuela returning “the oil that was taken from us.” Did they take our oil, or did we originally take theirs? Venezuela nationalized the industry in 1976 taking American production assets, but American companies never owned the oil reserves. 

  The broadcast had no dissenting voices on the wisdom or legality of capturing Maduro.

  CBS had planned to debut Dokoupil tonight with a 10-day, 10-city tour “sharing the most urgent, important stories with Americans, rather than talking to  them.” What that means and how it will work we’ll wait to see. It’s the work of journalism to inform the public. Dokoupil’s primary skill and charm is talking to people on the street, and while that is sometimes informative, most days that’s not where the news is, and the opinions of the uninformed are not what sway world events.

THE OBIT PAGE: Diane Crump, the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby, died last Thursday in Winchester, Virginia at age 77. At a time when women jockeys were given a chilly welcome, Crump was the first professional female jockey to race at a track in the United States where betting was legal. She became the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby in 1970, and went on to have  228 career victories.

THE SPIN RACK: One of the first police officers to respond to the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, goes on trial today on rare charges that he failed to do more protect children during the attack. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Starting at 12:45 this morning Donald Trump posted 39 times on his Truth Social, finishing at 1:07.

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