Donald Trump Suggests He’ll Run For Office In Another Country After US Presidency

Donald Trump said he may one day seek office in Venezuela, making the remark in a joking exchange during a cabinet meeting that nonetheless underscored how dramatically U.S. relations with Caracas have shifted since Washington’s January raid that removed Nicolás Maduro from power. Speaking at the White House on 26 March, Trump moved from a discussion about oil revenues and U.S. ties with Venezuela to a boast about his popularity there, saying: “Our relationship with Venezuela has been amazing. The people, actually I’m the highest polling person. And in other words, after the presidency, I think I may go to Venezuela and run for president against Delcy. I may run against Delcy. It’s an option. No, they like me in Venezuela, but it’s an option for me. It’s a wonderful option.” The room laughed, but the comment came in the middle of a serious discussion about the new U.S.-Venezuelan relationship and the future of Maduro, who Trump said will face additional charges in the United States.

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The remark was the latest example of Trump publicly tying his own political future, image and personal standing to the upheaval in Venezuela that followed the U.S. operation on 3 January. Reuters has reported that Maduro was captured by U.S. forces during a raid in Caracas and later appeared in New York on drug charges, while Delcy Rodríguez, who had been vice president and oil minister, was sworn in days later as Venezuela’s interim president. At the time, the Trump administration said Maduro’s removal would open the way for a stabilisation effort, economic recovery and eventually a political transition, though the U.S. role in the country immediately drew international scrutiny.

Trump’s joke also reflected how personally invested he has become in portraying the Venezuela operation as a political and economic success. In the same 26 March exchange, he said the United States had “taken in billions and billions of dollars” through its arrangement with Venezuela and described the relationship as “sort of like a joint venture”. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sitting alongside him, said Venezuela had generated more oil revenue in the first two months of the year than in much of the previous year and said the money was being placed in a U.S. Treasury blocked account rather than being “stolen anymore”. The comments were part of a broader administration message that the post-Maduro order in Caracas is producing both strategic and commercial gains for Washington.

That tone has been building for weeks. On 13 February, Trump said the U.S. relationship with Venezuela was “very good” and told reporters he planned to visit the country. He said Washington was “working together very closely” with Rodríguez on oil access and, when asked by Reuters whether he recognised her government, replied: “Yeah, we have done that. We are dealing with them, and really right now they have done a great job.” On 4 March he went further, posting on Truth Social that Rodríguez was “doing a great job” and that “The Oil is beginning to flow.” Those comments showed that Trump had moved from talking about the military removal of Maduro to openly praising the woman who emerged from Maduro’s inner circle to lead the interim government.

Rodríguez herself is one of the most powerful and controversial figures produced by Venezuela’s ruling socialist system. Reuters has described the 56-year-old labour lawyer as one of the “iron fists” of Venezuelan politics, a senior official who served as communications minister, foreign minister, finance minister, oil minister and vice president before becoming interim president. Her influence has long been reinforced by her alliance with her brother Jorge Rodríguez, the head of the National Assembly, and by her central role in defending the Chavista state during years of economic collapse, migration, alleged repression and international isolation. Maduro once called her a “tigress”, while critics have long viewed her as one of the regime’s most durable enforcers.

Since taking office, however, Rodríguez has tried to present herself not only as a continuity figure but also as the face of a more pragmatic order. In January she called for diplomacy with Washington and said that if she needed to travel there she would go “walking on her feet, not dragged there.” She also said she would “forge a new politics in Venezuela”. By March, she was hosting senior U.S. officials in Caracas, praising cooperation on minerals and investment, and pushing reforms to mining and oil laws designed to attract foreign capital. Reuters reported that a delegation led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum visited Caracas with more than two dozen U.S. mining and minerals companies, part of a push to open Venezuela more fully to American investment after Maduro’s ouster.

The economic backdrop to Trump’s remarks is central to why the story matters. Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but years of sanctions, corruption, underinvestment and institutional collapse crippled output under Maduro. Reuters reported this month that Venezuelan production had risen to 1.1 million barrels per day in March, up from 942,000 barrels per day in January, according to government data presented by Rodríguez. The Trump administration has used those gains to argue that a new arrangement is working, issuing sanctions waivers to encourage U.S. investment and backing deals involving Venezuelan oil. For Trump, that has allowed the politics and the economics of Venezuela to merge into a single narrative of restoration, leverage and profit.

The diplomatic reset has accelerated even further in recent days. On 30 March, the U.S. formally reopened its embassy in Caracas, which had been closed since the collapse in relations during Trump’s first term. The State Department said the move marked “a new chapter” in bilateral ties, and Reuters reported that the administration sees the reopened embassy as a key part of the president’s three-phase plan for Venezuela. That plan, according to Rubio, begins with stabilisation, moves to recovery with U.S. access to Venezuelan energy resources, and only then turns to political transition. Trump’s off-hand line about running against Rodríguez therefore landed at a moment when Washington was not merely commenting on Venezuela from afar but rebuilding an institutional presence inside the country.

The joke also came at a delicate moment for Maduro’s legacy and legal exposure. Trump said on 26 March that additional cases would be brought against the deposed leader, who is already facing narcoterrorism and narcotics-related charges in New York. Maduro’s fall remains the foundational event behind the current political order in Caracas, and the administration has continued to present his removal as both justified and profitable. Trump has repeatedly cited the Venezuela operation as proof of his willingness to use force in the region, while U.S. policy after the raid has included cutting off a major source of oil to Cuba and hinting at broader Western Hemisphere pressure campaigns. In that setting, even a joke about future office in Venezuela carried echoes of a much larger assertion of American power.

Inside Venezuela, the post-Maduro transition remains unsettled. Reuters reported this month that students have returned to the streets after years of repression, demanding democratic reforms, better university funding and the release of prisoners, while also expressing unease about the fact that political change came through U.S. military intervention rather than a domestic democratic process. Rodríguez has promoted investment, oil reform and cooperation with Washington, but critics continue to question whether the system she now leads is substantively different from the one she helped build. That tension helps explain why Trump’s claim that he is “the highest polling person” in Venezuela was so striking. It was cast as a punchline, but it leaned on an unresolved reality: the country’s future remains contested, and its politics are now deeply entangled with Trump’s own self-image and foreign policy.

For now, there is no sign that Trump’s remark was anything more than a joke delivered in the loose, improvised style that often defines his public appearances. But it was not an isolated joke detached from events. It came after weeks of Trump praising Rodríguez, celebrating oil cooperation, planning a visit to Caracas and reopening the U.S. embassy there. It came while Maduro was being pursued through the U.S. courts and while Venezuela’s interim government was courting investors with promises of legal reform and a more open economy. In that sense, the comment about running “against Delcy” was less a random quip than a distillation of the strange new order that has emerged since January: a U.S. president who helped topple Venezuela’s ruler, an interim leader from the old regime now working with Washington, and a bilateral relationship in which Trump increasingly speaks not as a distant observer, but as a man who sees himself at the centre of the story.