How Rubio is winning over Trumpworld on striking Venezuela

In the early days of President Trump's second term, the United States seemed interested in working with Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's authoritarian leader. Special envoy Rick Grenell met with Maduro, working with him to coordinate deportation flights to Caracas, a prisoner exchange deal and an agreement to allow Chevron to extract Venezuelan oil.

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

But Marco Rubio, Trump's secretary of state, had a different vision.

In a side-by-side conversation with Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, two opposition leaders, Rubio reiterated U.S. support for “restoring democracy in Venezuela” and called González the “legitimate president” of the beleaguered post-Maduro country. falsified last year's elections in his favor.

Rubio, who is now also national security adviser, has grown closer to Trump and developed an aggressive new policy toward Maduro that has brought Venezuela and the United States to the brink of military confrontation.

Grenell is being sidelined, two sources told The Times, as the US wages an unprecedented campaign. fatal blows on suspected Venezuelan drug ships—and is building up military assets in the Caribbean. Trump said on Wednesday that he had authorized The CIA will conduct a secret operation in the South American country, and that attacks on ground targets could be next.

“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 succeeded in winning over top leaders of the isolationist MAGA movement to his lifelong effort to topple left-wing authoritarian leaders in Latin America.

“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 inside the regime will bring Maduro to justice, either by expelling him, sending him to the United States, or sending him to his maker.”

In a recent public address to Trump, Maduro acknowledged that Rubio is now in charge of White House policy: “You have to be careful because Marco Rubio wants your hands to be stained with blood, the blood of South America, the blood of the Caribbean, the blood of Venezuela,” Maduro said.

As a senator from Florida, Rubio represented exiles from three leftist autocracies—Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela—and for years he made it his mission to weaken their governments. He says his family was unable to return to Cuba after Fidel Castro's revolution seven decades ago. He has long argued that removing Maduro would be a fatal blow to Cuba, whose economy is propped up by billions of dollars of Venezuelan oil under crippling U.S. sanctions.

In 2019, Rubio pushed Trump to support Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan opposition leader who unsuccessfully tried to overthrow Maduro.

Rubio later called on Trump to publicly support Machado, who was banned from voting in Venezuela's 2024 presidential election and was awarded last week Nobel Peace Prize for her democratic efforts. According to vote tallies collected by the opposition, Gonzalez won the election, running instead of Machado, but Maduro declared victory.

Rubio was convinced that only military power could change the situation in Venezuela, which has plunged into crisis under Maduro's rule, with a quarter of the population fleeing poverty, violence and political repression.

But there was a catch. Trump has repeatedly vowed not to interfere in other countries' politics, telling a Middle Eastern audience in May that the US “will no longer lecture you on how to live.”

Condemning decades of U.S. foreign policy, Trump complained that “interventionists were interfering with complex societies they didn't even understand.”

To counter those sentiments, Rubio cast Maduro in a new light that he hoped would appeal to Trump, who has been fixated on fighting immigration, illegal drugs and Latin American cartels since his first presidential campaign.

Rubio argued that targeting Maduro was not about promoting democracy or changing the government. He struck down a drug lord fueling crime on American streets, America's overdose epidemic and the flow of illegal immigration to America's borders.

Rubio has linked Maduro to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang whose members the secretary of state said are “worse than al-Qaeda.”

“Venezuela is run by a drug trafficking organization that has declared itself to be a nation state,” he said during his Senate confirmation hearing.

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

Security analysts and U.S. intelligence officials suggest ties between Maduro and Tren de Aragua are exaggerated.

Declassified memo The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has found no evidence of widespread cooperation between the Maduro government and the gang. He also stated that Tren de Aragua poses no threat to the United States.

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

However, Rubio's strategy appears to have worked.

In July, Trump declared Tren de Aragua a terrorist group led by Maduro and then ordered the Pentagon to use military force against the cartels, which the US government designated as terrorists.

Trump sent thousands of American troops and a small armada of ships and warplanes to the Caribbean and ordered strikes on five boats off the coast of Venezuela, killing 24 people. The administration claims the victims were “narco-terrorists” but has provided no evidence.

Elliot Abrams, a veteran diplomat who served as special envoy to Venezuela during Trump's first term, said he believes the White House will conduct limited strikes on Venezuela.

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

He continued: “Would it be good if such activity motivated a colonel to lead a coup? Yes, it would be good. But the administration will never say that.”

Even if Trump refrains from a ground invasion, there are serious risks.

“If this is a war, what is its goal? To overthrow Maduro? Is it more than just Maduro? To put a democratically elected president and a democratic regime in power?” said John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who served as chief legal adviser to the George W. Bush administration. “The American people will want to know what the end state is, what the purpose of all this is.”

“Whenever two armies fight so close to each other, there can be real action,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow on Latin America at the Chatham House think tank. “Trump is trying to do this on the cheap. He hopes that maybe he won't have to commit. But it's a slippery slope. It could drag the United States into war.”

Sabatini and others added that even if U.S. pressure forces Maduro out, what follows is far from certain.

Venezuela is dominated by a motley mixture of guerrillas and paramilitary groups that have enriched themselves through gold smuggling, drug trafficking and other illegal activities. No one has any incentive to lay down their arms.

And the country's opposition is far from unified.

Machado, who dedicated her Nobel Prize to Trump in an apparent attempt to win his support, says she is ready to govern Venezuela. But there are others – both in exile and in the Maduro administration – who would like to lead the country.

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

“Some say we are not ready, that the transition will lead to instability,” he said. “How can Maduro be a safe choice when 8 million Venezuelans have left, when there is no gasoline, no political persecution and no rampant inflation?”

Fernandez praised Rubio for bringing the Venezuela issue to a “tipping point.”

What a difference it makes, he said, to have a decision-maker in the White House with family roots in another country long oppressed by an authoritarian regime.

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

Linthicum reported from Mexico City, Wilner from Dallas and Ceballos from Washington. Special correspondent Mary Mogollon in Caracas contributed to this report.