Within the early days of President Trump’s second time period, the U.S. appeared eager to cooperate with Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian chief. Particular envoy Ric Grenell met Maduro, working with him to coordinate deportation flights to Caracas, a prisoner change deal and an settlement permitting Chevron to drill Venezuelan oil.
Grenell instructed disillusioned members of Venezuela’s opposition that Trump’s home targets took precedence over efforts to advertise democracy. “We’re not excited by regime change,” Grenell instructed the group, in keeping with two sources acquainted with the assembly.
However Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of State, had a distinct imaginative and prescient.
In a parallel name with María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, two leaders of the opposition, Rubio affirmed U.S. help “for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela” and known as González “the rightful president” of the beleaguered nation after Maduro rigged final yr’s election in his favor.
Rubio, now additionally serving as nationwide safety advisor, has grown nearer to Trump and crafted an aggressive new coverage towards Maduro that has introduced Venezuela and the US to the brink of army confrontation.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio whispers to President Trump throughout a roundtable assembly on the White Home on Oct. 8, 2025.
(Evan Vucci / Related Press)
I believe Venezuela is feeling the warmth
— President Trump
Grenell has been sidelined, two sources instructed The Instances, because the U.S. conducts an unprecedented marketing campaign of lethal strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug boats — and builds up army property within the Caribbean. Trump stated Wednesday that he has approved the CIA to conduct covert motion within the South American nation, and that strikes on land targets could possibly be subsequent.
“I believe Venezuela is feeling the warmth,” he stated.
The stress marketing campaign marks a serious victory for Rubio, the son of Cuban emigres and an sudden energy participant within the administration who has managed to sway high leaders of the isolationist MAGA motion to his lifelong effort to topple Latin America’s leftist authoritarians.
“It’s very clear that Rubio has received,” stated James B. Story, who served as ambassador to Venezuela underneath President Biden. “The administration is making use of army stress within the hope that any individual inside the regime renders Maduro to justice, both by exiling him, sending him to the US or sending him to his maker.”
In a current public message to Trump, Maduro acknowledged that Rubio is now driving White Home coverage: “It’s important to watch out as a result of Marco Rubio desires your palms stained with blood, with South American blood, Caribbean blood, Venezuelan blood,” Maduro stated.
As a senator from Florida, Rubio represented exiles from three leftist autocracies — Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — and for years he has made it his mission to weaken their governments. He says his household couldn’t return to Cuba after Fidel Castro’s revolution seven a long time in the past. He has lengthy maintained that eliminating Maduro would deal a deadly blow to Cuba, whose economic system has been buoyed by billions of {dollars} in Venezuelan oil within the face of punishing U.S. sanctions.
In 2019, Rubio pushed Trump to again Juan Guaidó, a Venezuelan opposition chief who sought unsuccessfully to topple Maduro.
Rubio later inspired Trump to publicly help Machado, who was barred from the poll in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, and who final week was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her pro-democracy efforts. González, who ran in Machado’s place, received the election, in keeping with vote tallies gathered by the opposition, but Maduro declared victory.
Rubio was satisfied that solely army may would deliver change to Venezuela, which has been plunged into disaster underneath Maduro’s rule, with 1 / 4 of the inhabitants fleeing poverty, violence and political repression.
However there was a hitch. Trump has repeatedly vowed to not intervene within the politics of different nations, telling a Center Japanese viewers in Could that the U.S. “would now not be providing you with lectures on reside.”
Denouncing a long time of U.S. overseas coverage, Trump complained that “the interventionalists have been intervening in advanced societies that they didn’t even perceive.”
To counter that sentiment, Rubio painted Maduro in a brand new mild that he hoped would spark curiosity from Trump, who has been fixated on combating immigration, unlawful medication and Latin American cartels since his first presidential marketing campaign.
Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, proper, and opposition chief María Corina Machado greet supporters throughout a marketing campaign rally in Valencia earlier than the nation’s presidential election in 2024.
(Ariana Cubillos / Related Press)
Going after Maduro, Rubio argued, was not about selling democracy or a change of governments. It was hanging a drug kingpin fueling crime in American streets, an epidemic of American overdoses, and a flood of unlawful migration to America’s borders.
Rubio tied Maduro to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan road gang whose members the secretary of State says are “worse than Al Qaeda.”
“Venezuela is ruled by a narco-trafficking group that has empowered itself as a nation state,” he stated throughout his Senate affirmation listening to.
In the meantime, outstanding members of Venezuela’s opposition pushed the identical message. “Maduro is the top of a narco-terrorist construction,” Machado instructed Fox Information final month.
Safety analysts and U.S. intelligence officers recommend that the hyperlinks between Maduro and Tren de Aragua are overblown.
A declassified memo by the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence discovered no proof of widespread cooperation between Maduro’s authorities and the gang. It additionally stated Tren de Aragua doesn’t pose a menace to the U.S.
The gang doesn’t visitors fentanyl, and the Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that simply 8% of cocaine that reaches the U.S. passes by way of Venezuelan territory.
Nonetheless, Rubio’s technique seems to have labored.
In July, Trump declared that Tren de Aragua was a terrorist group led by Maduro — after which ordered the Pentagon to make use of army drive towards cartels that the U.S. authorities had labeled terrorists.
Trump deployed hundreds of U.S. troops and a small armada of ships and warplanes to the Caribbean and has ordered strikes on 5 boats off the coast of Venezuela, leading to 24 deaths. The administration says the victims have been “narco-terrorists” however has supplied no proof.
Elliott Abrams, a veteran diplomat who served as particular envoy to Venezuela in Trump’s first time period, stated he believes the White Home will perform restricted strikes in Venezuela.
“I believe the following step is that they’re going to hit one thing in Venezuela — and I don’t imply boots on the bottom. That’s not Trump,” Abrams stated. “It’s a strike, after which it’s over. That’s very low danger to the US.”
He continued: “Now, would it not be good if that form of exercise spurred a colonel to guide a coup? Yeah, it could be good. However the administration is rarely going to say that.”
Even when Trump refrains from a floor invasion, there are main dangers.
“If it’s a conflict, then what’s the conflict’s goal? Is it to overthrow Maduro? Is it greater than Maduro? Is it to get a democratically elected president and a democratic regime in energy?” stated John Yoo, a professor of regulation at UC Berkeley, who served as a high authorized advisor to the George W. Bush administration. “The American folks will need to know what’s the tip state, what’s the purpose of all of this.”
“Every time you’ve got two militaries bristling that shut collectively, there could possibly be actual motion,” stated Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America on the assume tank Chatham Home. “Trump is making an attempt to do that on a budget. He’s hoping perhaps he received’t need to commit. Nevertheless it’s a slippery slope. This might draw the US right into a conflict.”
Sabatini and others added that even when the U.S. stress drives out Maduro, what follows is way from sure.
Venezuela is dominated by a patchwork of guerrilla and paramilitary teams which have enriched themselves with gold smuggling, drug trafficking and different illicit actions. None have incentive to put down arms.
And the nation’s opposition is way from unified.
Machado, who devoted her Nobel Prize to Trump in a transparent effort to achieve his help, says she is ready to manipulate Venezuela. However there are others — each in exile and in Maduro’s administration — who want to lead the nation.
Machado supporter Juan Fernandez stated something can be higher than sustaining the established order.
“Some say we’re not ready, {that a} transition would trigger instability,” he stated. “How can Maduro be the safe alternative when 8 million Venezuelans have left, when there is no such thing as a gasoline, political persecution and rampant inflation?”
Fernandez praised Rubio for pushing the Venezuela subject towards “an inflection level.”
What a distinction, he stated, to have a decision-maker within the White Home with household roots out of the country lengthy oppressed by an authoritarian regime.
“He completely understands our scenario,” Fernandez stated. “And now he has one of many highest positions in the US.”
Linthicum reported from Mexico Metropolis, Wilner from Dallas and Ceballos from Washington. Particular correspondent Mery Mogollón in Caracas contributed to this report.
