Secretary of State Marco Rubio dodged questions Sunday on whether the United States was 'running' Venezuela right now. 

'What we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward,' the Secretary of State said when pressed on ABC's This Week by host George Stephanopoulos.

In the aftermath of Saturday's dramatic overnight apprehension of leader Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump said that Rubio - and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth - would be charged with controlling the country. 

'Well, it's largely going to be run for a period of time by the people standing right behind me,' Trump said at the press conference at Mar-a-Lago. 'We're gonna be running it.'

The comments earned Rubio the nickname 'the Viceroy of Venezuela' from the Washington Post and suggested he would take on yet another role, as he's already serving as the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the head of the dismantled USAID and the Archivist of the United States.

Stephanopoulos, a veteran of Democratic President Bill Clinton's White House, repeatedly pressed Rubio on what legal authority the United States had to remove Maduro from his country and who the U.S. viewed as the country's current leader. 

'So is the United States running Venezuela right now?' he asked.

After Rubio's initial remark on the U.S. pointing Venezuela in the right direction, the Secretary of State explained that the United States currently has a quarantine on Venezuela's oil. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio dodges questions Sunday on whether the United States was 'running' Venezuela right now, after President Donald Trump volunteered him for the job during his Mar-a-Lago press conference the day before 

President Donald Trump (center) said Saturday from Mar-a-Lago that Secretary of State Marco Rubio (left) and Defense Secretary of Pete Hegseth (right) would 'run' Venezuela on the heels of Maduro's capture 

'That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interest of the Venezuelan people are met,' Rubio said. 'And that's what we intend to do.' 

'So that leverage remains, that leverage is ongoing, and we expect that it's going to lead to results here,' Rubio continued. 

He said the United States would 'set the conditions' so that Venezuela would no longer be a narco-state.