For months, as the US has built up military forces around Venezuela, attacking alleged drug boats and seizing sanctioned oil tankers, the big question was whether the US would escalate to a campaign of regime change against the government of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

After the dramatic events of Saturday morning, that question would appear to be answered — in some ways.

Obviously, Maduro himself is now out of power. After a dramatic late-night Delta Force raid on his safe house in Venezuela, he and his wife are now on board the USS Iwo Jima, headed to New York, where they will face charges of drug trafficking and narco-terrorism.

But as for what’s happening in Venezuela itself, the situation is still fluid, and a press conference held on Saturday afternoon by President Donald Trump and his top national security officials raised as many questions as it answered, though it did underline some core themes of this administration’s foreign policy.

Trump said multiple times that for the foreseeable future, the US would be “running” Venezuela. In particular, he said it would largely be run by “the people that are standing right behind me” on stage at Mar-a-Lago, a group that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Daniel Caine, and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller.

But Trump was vague about what “running” Venezuela actually means and did not seem to indicate that US officials would be taking direct power in Caracas. He noted that the vice president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, had been sworn in, claimed that Rubio had spoken with her, and that “she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.” (In her own first statements, Rodríguez called for Maduro’s return and vowed that Venezuela would not be a US “colony,” so it’s not quite clear what assurances she gave Rubio.)

This would seem to indicate that the administration is willing to leave Rodríguez or other top regime figures in power, at least for the time being, which jibes with what some lawmakers claim they’ve heard from the administration but not with what most people would consider “running” the........

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