Name: 10 Things You Need to Know About the Venezuela Crisis
Uploaded: 2026-01-08T17:08:53.000Z
Duration: 18 min 3 s
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Adverbs of manner

We obviously have to start with the capture and indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

And today we're breaking down the Trump administration's capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and its seismic implications.

He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit, but

Good morning, I'm Allison Kossick and we're coming on the air this morning to tell you that President Trump has confirmed that strikes on Venezuela just before dawn on January 3, 2026.

The long running standoff between Washington and Caracas crossed a line that few believed would actually be crossed.

A US Operation in Venezuela's capital and largest city ended with Nicolas Maduro being taken into custody and flown to the United States.

All Venezuelan military capacities were rendered perilous as the men and women of our military working with US Law enforcement successfully.

Within days, the image defining the crisis shifted from smoke and debris in the Venezuelan capital to a courtroom in Manhattan.

There, Maduro appeared on January 5, declared that he'd been captured and insisted he remained Venezuela's president as he pleaded not guilty to federal charges.

In a single weekend, the conflict moved from sanctions and diplomacy into the realm of precedent setting force.

Before January 3rd, this was pressure politics.

After it was, the global rules of engagement themselves were up for debate.

Maduro and Flores have been indicted in the Southern district of New York.

Jay Clayton for their campaign of deadly narco terrorism against the United States and its citizens.

I want to thank the men and women of our military who achieved such an extraordinary success overnight.

Yeah, we've really seen a, you know, a bunch of sanctions, you know, get announced in the past couple weeks, you know, specifically targeting, you know, companies and vessels with ties to Venezuela, including, you know, some companies involved in the Venezuela and Iranian weapons trade.

After years of escalating pressure, criminal indictments, diplomatic isolation, oil sanctions and partial rollbacks.

That's not even mentioning repeated warnings that Maduro's inner circle was being treated less like a government and more like a transnational criminal network.

Over time, law enforcement language blended with national security framing, shrinking the distance between courtroom logic and military planning.

Secretary Rubio argued the US Is at war with drug trafficking operations, not Venezuela.

As President Trump suggested neighboring Colombia could be next.

The top eight congressional leaders are due for a classified briefing today.

According to four sources with lawmakers in both parties pressing for more information for all of Congress.

By the time the operation happened, the groundwork had already been laid, rhetorically and politically.

What changed wasn't the accusation, it was the willingness to act on it.

That's what makes this moment different from every previous standoff.

Yeah, there's been a little bit of mixed messaging.

Here is right before Christmas, we heard from the White House that the.

The posture is that they wanted to really focus on economic sanctions.

So that is, you know, sanctioning vessels, oil tankers, oil companies, and

sort of using, you know, what we've seen, sort of intercepting a lot of those oil tankers, you know, sort of to exert, you know, financial pressure on Maduro's regime.

We have more breaking news just coming in.

Delsey Rodriguez has been sworn in as the new president of Venezuela.

It comes as mixed reactions pour in from around the world after that surprise US Mission in Venezuela.

We should mention Rodriguez used to be the vice president under Nicolas Maduro.

Now she's being sworn in as interim president there.

One of the most striking aspects of the crisis was how quickly and frantically Venezuela's institutions moved to protect continuity.

Within days of Maduro's removal, Vice President Delsey Rodriguez was sworn in as interim president, with the ceremony overseen by National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez.

UBC's Max Cameron has studied Latin American politics for more than three decades.

I think that there's going to be a complicated game of chicken that's going to be played between Delsey Rodriguez and Marco Rubio and Donald Trump.

And where that goes is incredibly uncertain.

It reassured parts of the bureaucracy and security forces that the state hadn't collapsed.

This wasn't a sweeping transition led by the opposition.

It was a handoff within the existing power structure designed to stabilize first and negotiate later.

Whether that choice prevents chaos or simply preserves the system under a new face is now one of the central tensions shaping Venezuela's future.

She has offered some conflicting statements.

Right about what exactly, if any, cooperation there would be.

With the Trump administration initially striking a very defiant tone, then releasing a statement yesterday suggesting that there might be some room for cooperation or at least negotiation.

Donald Trump has been unambiguous that Venezuelan oil and the commercial opportunity it represents for American companies were a primary reason for the removal of President Maduro.

And that's because Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on earth.

An estimated 300 billion barrels lying untapped.

The crisis became global the moment oil entered the conversation, which was pretty much immediately.

Venezuela's vast reserves of the stuff make it impossible to separate politics from energy.

And talk of rebuilding, reopening production and renegotiating access followed fast.

Whoever governs next will also decide who gets paid, who gets contracts, and who gets left out.

And today, Venezuela produces less than a million barrels a day.

Now, given there are sanctions in place, it's worth asking where those barrels of oil end up.

And this chart shows the Caesar exports in Venezuela in the last year.

And the bulk goes to China, much of it under exemption to repay historic loans.

But the balance goes to the United States, which has granted Chevron a license to operate in Venezuela despite the sanctions.

That reality sharpened international reactions and fueled skepticism at home.

For many Venezuelans, the fear wasn't abstract geopolitics.

It was the worry that regime change might be less about democratic recovery and more around resource management.

Given President Trump's repeated mentions of oil.

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

I want to start with this big picture question.

Is the United States now at war with Venezuela?

We are at war against drug trafficking organizations is not a war against Venezuela.

Trump and the United States insisted that there was no war with Venezuela.

But neutrality wasn't really on offer either.

The operation was framed as enforcement of criminal charges yet carried out by the military, blurring lines that international law normally tries to keep bright.

By leaning on drug trafficking and narco terrorism language, the administration wasn't just making a legal argument.

We are enforcing American laws with regards to oil sanctions.

We go to court, we get a warrant, we seize those boats with oil, and