Donald Trump has no plan for what comes next in Venezuela, according to sources familiar with his thinking. After capturing Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, the US president is relying on his top aides to develop their Venezuela policy on the hoof. “There is no blueprint, no plan for what comes next,” said one source. “And anybody who tells you that it’s anything other than day-by-day is really not being forthright with you.” The former Venezuelan leader appeared in Manhattan’s federal court on Monday. He was arrested in an audacious raid by US special forces on Saturday morning to face charges of narco-terrorism. Delcy Rodríguez, Mr Maduro’s vice-president, has since been sworn in as the interim leader. At first, she struck a defiant tone, but later suggested that she was prepared to work with the US.

once again, Western media doing the whole “oh the Venezuelan government is totally willing to cooperate!” shit

At the same time, Mr Trump’s vision for what comes next appears at odds with the views of his top foreign policy official. The result is confusion about how Washington plans to oversee Venezuela’s transition to a democratic government and exactly how it will avoid the sort of quagmire that bogged down past interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. “We are going to run the country until we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” is how Mr Trump put it on Saturday, setting out a course to democratic elections, even as he played down the role of the country’s democratically elected opposition leaders. Marco Rubio, his secretary of state and one of the leading Venezuela hawks in his administration, described things differently. He told Sunday news shows that the US would exert influence on the Caracas government through its sanctions, preventing oil tankers from coming and going. “That remains in place, and that’s a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes, not just to further the national interest of the United States, which is number one, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela,” he told CBS News.

A second source said their public words reflected private differences on how to view the remnants of Mr Maduro’s regime. For Mr Rubio, there is unease that so many officials connected to the drug trade remain in place.

oh fuck off

“There are dozens of people here,” said the source. “They’ve been indicted and implicated. So what about their future?” Mr Rubio cut an agitated figure during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago on Jan 3. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other while in front of him, Mr Trump laid out his view of the raid, saying that the US would run the country until a “safe, proper and judicious” transition could be achieved. A senior White House official said it was wrong to think there was confusion among Mr Trump and his top team. “This is false – president Trump and secretary Rubio have been consistent,” they said. “Both were speaking about exerting maximum leverage with the remaining elements in Venezuela and ensuring they co-operate with the United States by halting illegal migration, stopping drug flows, revitalising oil infrastructure, and doing what is right for the Venezuelan people.” The president said a working group of senior advisers were planning for Venezuela’s future, but he did not spell out their roles and responsibilities.

Regional experts have warned that the ambition and rhetoric have yet to be matched by a detailed plan. “The duration of the transition, its benchmarks, and its ultimate outcome all remain resoundingly unclear,” said Laurel Rapp, director of the US and North America programme at Chatham House, in a recent commentary. “Trump and Rubio’s imprecise language about who currently runs Venezuela hints at limited succession planning, if any.” Senior Trump figures see the approach as a strength, not a criticism. They say he makes huge demands on his staff to operate on “Trump time” by making rapid decisions and then setting tight deadlines for them to be enacted. “It is not a criticism. It is his style,” said the first source familiar with the president’s Venezuela thinking. “Pull the trigger and then figure out how it works.”

I’m not incompetent, it’s just my style!

In this case, he added, Mr Trump and his team were particularly incensed by the way Mr Maduro had responded to US demands by dancing in public. “At some point here, he did feel that sometimes he was being mocked,” he said, confirming previous reports by the New York Times. Mr Rubio and other top officials briefed leaders in Congress on Monday night amid mounting concerns that Mr Trump is operating without consulting representatives and does not have a clear vision for running the South American country. Republican leaders entered the closed-door session at the Capitol largely supportive of Trump’s decision to forcibly remove Mr Maduro from power. However, many Democrats emerged with more questions as Mr Trump maintains a fleet of naval vessels off the Venezuelan coast and urges US companies to reinvest in the country’s underperforming oil industry. A war powers resolution that would prohibit US military action in Venezuela without approval from Congress is heading for a vote this week in the Senate.

Mike Johnson, the house speaker, said: “We don’t expect troops on the ground.” Gregg Nunziata, a long-time Republican aide who is now the executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law, said competing justifications for action – to stem the supply of drugs reaching American soil or to get access to Venezuelan oil or to promote democracy, for example – muddied thinking about next steps. “I think observers are right to question whether the lack of a coherent explanation and whether the conflicting justifications from the administration are an indication of a deliberate strategy or real confusion within the senior ranks of the administration,” he told The Telegraph. A state department official said Monday that the Trump administration is making preliminary plans to reopen the US embassy in Venezuela. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said early preparations “to allow for a reopening” of the embassy in Caracas had begun in the event that Mr Trump decides to return American diplomats to the country.