On Saturday, hours after U.S. troops seized Nicolás Maduro, the authoritarian leader of Venezuela, from a military compound in Caracas, Donald Trump delivered a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Before it began, a former American official, who had served in the first Trump White House, told me there was a chance that Trump would simply “declare victory and go home.” Such a move, at once cynical and dangerous, would be typical of Trump. Maduro’s regime could easily survive without him; if it didn’t, a power vacuum among armed factions of the military, vigilante groups known as colectivos, and Colombian guerrillas operating along the border could unleash untold chaos and violence. “Trump didn’t promise anything,” the former official told me. “He just delivered on a huge win and a total embarrassment for Venezuela, and an important message to others. This victory gives the Administration an opportunity to disengage.”

In Trump’s usual fashion, his press conference raised a host of new and confounding questions. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, by far the Administration’s most fervent anti-Maduro ideologue, cautiously described the leader’s capture as a law-enforcement operation. But Trump, who had been reluctant during his first term to enlist American forces to overthrow Maduro, went further, suggesting a more prolonged U.S. presence in the country. “We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he said. Standing behind him was the team of advisers—Rubio; Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff; Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War; and the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe—who, Trump went on, are “going to be running” the country for the time being. At one point, Trump offered what, to former U.S. officials and regional experts, was a confusing account of two key Venezuelan players: María Corina Machado, the opposition leader and Nobel laureate, and Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s loyal deputy and the acting Vice-President at the time of his ouster. When asked if Machado would have a role in the country’s transition, Trump was categorical. “She’s a very nice woman,” he said, but “she doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.” Rodríguez, by contrast, is “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. Very simple.”

What went unmentioned was the fact that Trump had sanctioned Rodríguez for repressing dissent during his first term, and that she’d been handpicked for her current job by Maduro himself. “The disconnect between the reality of Delcy and the reality of María Corina Machado and how both of them were portrayed made me think that there was some confusion,” Carrie Filipetti, who worked at the State Department during the first Trump Administration, as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Cuba and Venezuela, told me. The former official, who was watching the press conference and messaging with colleagues, also registered the confusion. “We caught it immediately at the time,” he said. A few of these colleagues were scheduled to give television or radio interviews after Trump’s speech. They started asking each other for clarification.