America First? Trump Declares Himself Acting President of Venezuela

Donald Trump’s “mandate from the people” apparently extends to foreign oil-rich nations.

The president informally declared himself “acting president” of Venezuela Sunday evening, sharing an edited variant of his Wikipedia profile to include the detail underneath his official 2025 portrait on Truth Social.

The line reads: “Acting President of Venezuela, incumbent, January 2026.”

The title addition also precedes details of his U.S. presidency.

The Truth Social post received more than 23,000 likes, and fielded replies suggesting that America should take over all of Latin America. “This is our hemisphere,” reads one response that included an image of a red, white, and blue map spanning from Greenland to Argentina.

U.S. forces invaded Venezuela earlier this month, bombing its capital, Caracas, as nearly 200 American troops infiltrated the city to capture its 13-year ruler, Nicolás Maduro. That’s left open questions about Venezuela’s political future and who will run it, especially as Trump and his officials tout that the military incursion was primarily to acquire the nation’s oil resources.

Trump has signaled that he would recognize Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as the face of the country. Rodríguez was recognized by Venezuela’s armed forces as its interim leader, and she was sworn into office shortly after Maduro was kidnapped.

In a press conference hours after Maduro’s abduction, Trump warned that Rodríguez would pay “a very high price” if she did not “do what’s right” with regard to helping American companies access Venezuela’s oil reserves.

On Tuesday, Trump announced that the U.S. would oversee the sale of some 50 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan oil, a sale that could be worth as much as $2.5 billion. The following day, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that America would continue to oversee and sell Venezuelan oil “indefinitely,” even after the government finishes chewing through the Latin American country’s stockpiled oil reserves.

In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, Trump claimed that the U.S. will likely run Venezuela for years.