According to a recent classified intelligence assessment briefed to President Donald J. Trump and shared with a small circle of senior administration officials, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) determined that top members of Nicolás Maduro’s Regime - including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez - would be best positioned to lead a temporary government and maintain stability in Caracas. An assessment which reportedly played a role in Trump’s decision to back Rodríguez instead of Venezuelan opposition leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, María Corina Machado, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.

Reports of sporadic gunfire and explosions in the last few hours near the Miraflores Presidential Palace Complex in Venezuela’s capital of Caracas.

Additional video showing gunfire earlier in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.

Police on the ground claim that the gunfire heard earlier in the vicinity of the Miraflores Presidential Palace Complex in Venezuela’s capital city was the result of military and security personnel opening fire on a drone flying near the complex, possibly one of their own drones, with it not clear if the drone was even successfully downed over Caracas.

“The [Trump] Administration is closely tracking the reports of gunfire out of Venezuela. The U.S. is not involved,” an official with the White House told NewsNation.

Video footage from earlier shows much of the gunfire being directed upwards towards the sky over Caracas, supporting claims that military and security forces were attempting to down some kind of drone near the Miraflores Presidential Palace Complex.

Speaking during an exclusive interview tonight with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado says that she has not spoken to President Donald J. Trump since the capture Saturday of Nicolás Maduro, stating that Vice President, now Interim President, Delcy Rodríguez is a “main ally and liaison with Russia, China, Iran. Certainly not an individual that could be trusted by international investors, and she’s rejected the Venezuelan People.” Machado added that she plans to return to Venezuela “as soon as possible” from her exile abroad, in addition to who many claim is the rightful President of Venezuela, Edmundo Gonzalez, who is currently living in Spain.

Speaking this morning on her SiriusXM Show, American commentator and media personality Megyn Kelly says that watching Fox News’ coverage on Venezuela has been like watching “Russian propaganda,” with her stating:

“I turned on Fox News yesterday, and I'm sorry, but it was like watching Russian propaganda. There was nothing skeptical. It was all rah-rah cheerleading, yes, let's go. 

And that's fine. I love our military as much as anyone, and I believe in President Trump, but there are serious reasons to just exercise a note of caution before we just get on the rah-rah train. All right. I have done that enough times in my career as a Fox News anchor to have been embarrassed enough to know I'm going to stay on the yellow light for this. I'm not in the green-light territory. I'm not in the red-light territory either, but I am staying in the yellow-light territory for now. 

I see all of the strategic advantages of what he's done. Trust me. I do. I see that other countries like Russia and China and Cuba were all over Venezuela and its oil posing a potential threat to the United States. I get that. That's actually the most persuasive argument and obviously the real one and none of this bullshit about law enforcement. But I have seen what happens when you cheerlead, unabashedly, U.S. intervention in foreign countries thinking it's for our good and for the national and the international good only to wind up with what we've called quagmire in places like Iraq, not to mention Libya. We're not great at going into these foreign countries, decapitating them at the leadership level, and then saying either we're going to steer the country to a better place or it's going to steer itself. Either one. They just -- nine times out of 10, they don't work out well. 

And what does it mean in terms of boots on the ground? Trump is saying, I'm actually fine with that in Venezuela. Well, whose boots? Because I have a 16 year-old boy, and I have a 12-year old boy, and I have a 14 year-old girl. And a lot of my listeners have children too who are actually the ones who might have to fill the boots. So I think I speak for a lot of moms and dads for that matter when I say I'm staying in yellow territory until we know more, and I will not be joining the Fox News cheerleading brigade this time. I've been burned too many times.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson stated following tonight’s roughly two-hour-long closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill to senior members of Congress regarding the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, that he does not expect troops on the ground in Venezuela. “We don’t expect direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the interim government to get that going. I expect that there will be an election called in Venezuela,” said Johnson.

At least sixteen oil tankers under sanctions imposed by the United States are currently in the process of attempting to evade and possibly break the U.S. Navy’s “complete blockade” in the Southern Caribbean, which was ordered by President Donald J. Trump to be positioned around Venezuela, according to The New York Times and TankerTrackers.

The vessels, which for several weeks have been spotted docked at ports on the northern coast of Venezuela, had all departed by Saturday’s following the capture of Venezuela’s Former President Nicolás Maduro in an operation against the nation’s capital by the U.S. Army’s Delta Force. Four of the vessels have been tracked by satellite sailing east along the shore of Venezuela, using fake ship names and “spoofing” their positions, one falsely appearing in the Baltic Sea and another off the coast of Nigeria.

According to internal communications from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and two people in the Venezuelan oil industry, the vessels left port without authorization from the interim government led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, which was created following the capture Saturday of Maduro. At least three of the ships were in close proximity as they left Venezuela in the same direction, suggesting at least some coordination and a possible attempt to “overwhelm” the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard.

Fires burn and smoke rises from an oil depot near the town of Usman, in the Lipetsk Oblast of Western Russia, following a drone attack earlier tonight by Ukraine.

Venezuela’s Ministry of Communication and Information has now confirmed that gunfire heard earlier tonight near the Miraflores Presidential Palace Complex in Caracas, was the results of warning shots being fired by police at “unidentified drones” flying over the palace without permission from the Ministry of Defense. “We want to clarify that what happened in downtown Caracas was because some drones flew over without permission and the police fired dissuasive shots. No confrontation took place. The whole country is in total tranquility,” said a Spokesman for the Information Ministry.

Rare footage from recent clashes between Cambodia and Thailand, which shows a Thai FPV Drone striking a bunker used by the Royal Cambodian Army. Unlike Ukraine, we have gotten very little footage of drone use by either Cambodian or Thai Forces.

President Donald J. Trump speaking this morning about Nicolás Maduro: “He was a violent guy. He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit. But he’s a violent guy.”

President Trump speaking this morning in front of House Republicans: