Trump on Venezuela: ‘They are not ready yet for elections, but at some point they will be’

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump talked about his policy in Venezuela on Wednesday during a news conference at the White House.

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Trump described a mutually beneficial relationship and praised Delcy Rodríguez, who has served as the acting president since Nicolás Maduro’s capture on Jan. 3, as “doing a fantastic job.”

Trump also said that presidential elections will not happen anytime soon.

“They are not ready yet for the elections, but at some point, they will be, and we are going to be standing right on top of it,” Trump said during the news conference in the Oval Office.

U.S. Secretary Marco Rubio has said elections are part of a three-phase plan for stabilization, recovery, and transition.

“The amount of money being made by Venezuela now is more than they have ever made before, and we are taking a lot also, you know, for our efforts,” Trump said during the question-and-answer segment of the conference.

On oil sales, Rubio has said that the U.S. is committed to strict financial oversight, ensuring deposits into U.S. Treasury-controlled accounts, and disbursing only after approving monthly government budgets.

“That money will then be handled in such a way that we will control how it is disbursed in a way that benefits the Venezuelan people, not corruption, not the regime, so we have a lot of leverage to move on the stabilization front,” Rubio said in January.

Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, the opposition leader, traveled to Panama after the 7.2 and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes struck northern Venezuela on June 24. She was unable to travel to Caracas.

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“Even though I cannot be there physically, I am with each of you — with every family still grieving those they lost, and with those who continue to seek answers,” Machado said in Spanish on Friday.

The Trump administration continued to assist the Venezuelan victims of the earthquakes, as the official death toll increased to5,069 people on Friday, and there were 190 collapsed buildings. The World Bank recently estimated $19.6 billion in damages.

Trump said he was hopeful and “a lot of progress has been made” since “the amount of oil coming out of Venezuela, even before the big companies, you know Exxon, all the big companies there … looking at it, they are going there.”

Trump also said he was “very popular” in Venezuela.

“For a long time, I’ve known their country and, you know, I owned the Miss Universe pageant and Miss Venezuela always did very well in that pageant, so I know something about the country,” Trump said about owning the Miss Universe organization from 1996 to 2015.

Venezuelan women won the Miss Universe crown seven times from 1979 to 2013. Trump also described Venezuelans as “great people.”

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