How Rubio is winning over Trumpworld on striking Venezuela

In the early days of President Trump’s second term, the United States appeared eager to cooperate with Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro. Special envoy Ric Grenell met with Maduro and worked with him to coordinate deportation flights to Caracas, a prisoner exchange deal and a deal allowing Chevron to drill for Venezuelan oil.

Grenell told frustrated members of the Venezuelan opposition that Trump’s domestic goals took priority over his efforts to promote democracy. “We’re not interested in regime change,” Grenell told the group, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

But Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a different vision.

In a parallel call with two leaders of the opposition, María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, Rubio affirmed U.S. support for “the restoration of democracy in Venezuela” and called González the “rightful president” of the beleaguered nation after Maduro rigged last year’s elections in his favor.

Rubio, who now also serves as national security advisor, has moved closer to Trump and developed a new and aggressive policy against Maduro that has brought Venezuela and the United States to the brink of military conflict.

Grenell has been sidelined as the United States wages an unprecedented campaign of deadly attacks on suspected Venezuelan drug ships and builds military assets in the Caribbean, two sources told The Times. Trump said on Wednesday that he had authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in the South American country and that the next attack could be on ground targets.

“I think Venezuela is feeling the heat,” he said.

The pressure campaign marks a major victory for Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and an unlikely power player in the administration who has managed to steer top leaders of the isolationist MAGA movement into his lifelong effort to topple Latin America’s leftist authoritarians.

“It’s very clear that Rubio won,” said James B. Story, who served as ambassador to Venezuela under President Biden. “The administration is applying military pressure in the hope that someone within the regime will bring Maduro to justice by exiling him, sending him to the United States, or sending him to his creator.”

In a recent public message to Trump, Maduro acknowledged that Rubio now directs White House policy: “You have to be careful because Marco Rubio wants your hands to be stained with blood, South American blood, Caribbean blood, Venezuelan blood,” he said.

As a senator from Florida, Rubio represented exiles from three left-wing autocracies — Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — and had made it his mission for years to weaken their governments. He says his family was unable to return to Cuba after Fidel Castro’s revolution seventy years ago. He has long argued that removing Maduro would deal a fatal blow to Cuba, whose economy has been boosted by billions of dollars of Venezuelan oil in the face of punitive U.S. sanctions.

In 2019, Rubio pushed Trump to support Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who is trying to oust Maduro.

Rubio then encouraged Trump to openly support Machado, who is banned from voting in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week for his pro-democracy efforts. González, who competed instead of Machado, won the election according to the number of votes collected by the opposition, but Maduro declared victory.

Rubio believed that only military force could bring change to Venezuela, which had been plunged into crisis under Maduro’s rule, with a quarter of the population fleeing poverty, violence and political repression.

But there was a hitch. Trump has repeatedly promised not to interfere in other nations’ politics, and in May he told a Middle Eastern audience that the United States “will no longer lecture you on how to live.”

Condemning decades of US foreign policy, Trump complained that “interventionists are intervening in complex societies they do not understand.”

To counter that notion, Rubio painted Maduro in a new light that he hoped would appeal to Trump, who has devoted himself to fighting immigration, illegal drugs and Latin American cartels since his first presidential campaign.

Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia (right) and opposition leader María Corina Machado greet supporters at a campaign rally in Valencia ahead of the country’s 2024 presidential election.

(Ariana Cubillos / Associated Press)

Rubio argued that going after Maduro is not about promoting democracy or seeking a change of government. This included a drug lord fueling crime on America’s streets, an epidemic of overdoses in America, and a flood of illegal immigration onto America’s borders.

Rubio linked Maduro to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang whose members the Secretary of State said were “worse than Al Qaeda.”

“Venezuela is run by a drug trafficking organization that has consolidated itself as a nation state,” he said at his Senate confirmation hearing.

Meanwhile, prominent members of the Venezuelan opposition gave the same message. “Maduro is the head of a narco-terrorist entity,” Machado told Fox News last month.

Security analysts and U.S. intelligence officials argue that connections between Maduro and Tren de Aragua have been exaggerated.

declassified memory An investigation by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found no evidence of widespread collaboration between Maduro’s government and the gang. It was also stated that Tren de Aragua did not pose a threat to the United States.

The gang does not traffic in fentanyl, and the Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that only 8% of cocaine reaching the United States passes through Venezuelan territory.

Still, Rubio’s strategy appears to be working.

In July, Trump declared Tren de Aragua a terrorist group led by Maduro and then ordered the Pentagon to use military force against cartels that the U.S. government has labeled terrorist.

Trump deployed thousands of US troops and a small armada of ships and fighter jets to the Caribbean and ordered attacks on five boats off the coast of Venezuela, resulting in 24 deaths. The administration said the victims were “drug terrorists” but offered no evidence.

Elliott Abrams, a senior diplomat who served as special envoy to Venezuela during Trump’s first term, said he believes the White House will carry out limited strikes in Venezuela.

“I think the next step is they’re going to hit something in Venezuela. I don’t mean boots on the ground. That’s not Trump,” Abrams said. “It’s one strike and then it’s over. This is a very low risk for the United States.”

He continued: “Now, would it be nice if this kind of activity encouraged a colonel to stage a coup? Yes, it would be nice. But the administration will never say that.”

Even if Trump avoids a ground attack, there are big risks.

“If it is war, what is the purpose of the war? To overthrow Maduro? More than Maduro? To bring to power a democratically elected president and a democratic regime?” “The American people will want to know what the bottom line is, what the purpose of all this is,” said John Yoo, a law professor at UC Berkeley who served as chief legal counsel to the George W. Bush administration.

“When you have two militaries that close together, real action can occur,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow on Latin America at the think tank Chatham House. “Trump is trying to do this cheaply. Maybe he hopes he won’t have to commit. But this is a slippery slope. This could drag the United States into a war.”

Even if U.S. pressure ousts Maduro, what happens next is far from certain, Sabatini and others added.

Venezuela is dominated by a cluster of guerrilla and paramilitary groups who enrich themselves through gold smuggling, drug trafficking and other illegal activities. None of them have any incentive to lay down their arms.

And the country’s opposition is far from united.

Machado, who dedicated his Nobel Prize to Trump clearly to gain his support, says he is ready to govern Venezuela. However, there are others who want to rule the country both in exile and under Maduro.

Machado supporter Juan Fernandez said anything would be better than maintaining the status quo.

“Some say we are not prepared, that the transition will lead to instability,” he said. “How can Maduro be a safe choice when 8 million Venezuelans are leaving the country, there is no gas, political persecution and high inflation?”

Fernandez praised Rubio for pushing the Venezuela issue toward a “turning point.”

He said how different it is to have a decision maker in the White House whose family roots are in another country that has long been oppressed by an authoritarian regime.

“He understands our situation very well,” Fernandez said. “And now he holds one of the highest offices in the United States.”

Linthicum is reportedly from Mexico City, Wilner is from Dallas, and Ceballos is from Washington. Special correspondent Mery Mogollón in Caracas contributed to this report.