Vice President of Venezuela, public appearance in which she contradicts Trump / What the “tigress” said to Maduro

Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said on Saturday that Nicolas Maduro is Venezuela's only president, her exit coming after Donald Trump said she was sworn in as head of state after Maduro was captured by the US in a military operation.

Rodriguez spoke on state television in Caracas along with her brother, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and the foreign and defense ministers.

Rodriguez appealed for calm and unity to defend the country in the context of Maduro's “kidnapping” and declared that Venezuela will never be a colony of any nation.

She called for the immediate release of Maduro, “the only president of Venezuela.”

Delcy Rodriguez rejected a secret deal with Rubio and said that Maduro is the president pic.twitter.com/wWCX0DpmQC

— Nacho Montes de Oca (@nachomdeo) January 3, 2026

Delcy Rodriguez's reaction came after Trump said she had been “inaugurated” as president and was “willing to do what we think is necessary to return Venezuela to its former glory.”

State television showed Rodriguez speaking in Caracas despite earlier reports, including Reuters' sources, that he was in Russia.

What is known about Delcy Rodriguez

• Maduro has in the past likened Rodriguez to a “tigress” for the way she fights to defend his socialist government.
• She works closely with her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, who is head of the legislature, the National Assembly.
• Rodriguez, 56, originally from Caracas, was born on May 18, 1969, and is the daughter of leftist guerrilla fighter Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, who founded the revolutionary League Socialista party in the 1970s.
• Rodriguez's positions as Minister of Finance and Oil, which she held concurrently with that of Vice President, made her a key figure in the management of Venezuela's economy and gave her major influence over the country's private sector.
• She is a lawyer, graduated from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, and has risen rapidly in the political hierarchy over the past decade, serving as Minister of Communications and Information between 2013 and 2014.
• Rodriguez, known as a lover of luxury clothes and bags, served as foreign minister from 2014 to 2017, when she tried to disrupt a meeting of the Mercosur trade bloc in Buenos Aires after Venezuela was suspended from the group.
• In 2017, he began serving as head of the pro-government Constituent Assembly, which expanded Maduro's powers.
• Rodriguez was named vice president in June 2018, with Maduro announcing X's appointment and describing her as “a young woman, brave, experienced, daughter of a martyr, revolutionary and tried in thousands of battles”.
• In August 2024, Maduro added the oil ministry to Rodriguez's portfolio, where she was tasked with managing increasingly severe US sanctions on the country's most important industry.