On the menu today: Meet the new boss, the vice president of the old boss. In the early morning hours of Saturday, the U.S. military executed one of the most stunningly proficient operations in its history, grabbing Venezuela’s brutal dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife from his compound in Caracas and leaving them in a cell in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. But apparently the Trump administration’s plan is to leave Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, in charge as head of the Venezuelan state, and to hope that the threat of additional military action keeps her in line. But leaving the chief henchman in charge doesn’t seem like great odds for a freer or better future for the Venezuelan people, or regional stability.
Great Job, but Now What?
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, is not a nice woman. She is a Maduro loyalist, a “hardline socialist,” and has close ties to Cuba’s intelligence agency. The New York Times described her “impeccable leftist credentials” as the “daughter of a Marxist guerrilla who won fame for kidnapping an American businessman.” From 2018 to 2022, Rodríguez headed SEBIN, the Venezuelan intelligence service, which the United Nations determined “repressed dissent through crimes against humanity” “including acts of torture and sexual violence. . . . The report details how orders were given by individuals at the highest political levels to lower-ranking officials. Both SEBIN and DGCIM made extensive use of sexual and gender-based violence to torture and humiliate its detainees.”
In December, imprisoned retired Venezuelan major general Cliver Antonio Alcalá Cordones sent a letter accusing “Rodriguez and her brother, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez of being the real leaders of the criminal network long known as the Cartel de los Soles.” In November, the U.S. government designated the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization.
The entirety of the time that Rodríguez held powerful positions in the Venezuelan regime, groups like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have documented “grave and systematic human rights violations.”
In June 2018, the European Union imposed sanctions on Rodríguez, declaring that she and ten other Venezuelan officials were “responsible for human rights violations and for undermining democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela.”
(In an indication of how seriously European Union members take their own sanctions, back in January 2020, Spanish Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos met Rodríguez at Madrid’s international airport as Rodríguez was traveling from Venezuela to Turkey. The argument from the Spanish government was that Rodríguez and her plane were in a portion of the airport that was not technically Spanish soil. “A spokeswoman for the EU’s executive Commission said it was up to individual nations to interpret how sanctions apply to airport areas prior to passport controls.”)
A few months later, the U.S. Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on Rodríguez.
“President Maduro relies on his inner circle to maintain his grip on power, as his regime systematically plunders what remains of Venezuela’s wealth. We are continuing to designate loyalists who enable Maduro to solidify his hold on the military and the government while the Venezuelan people suffer,” then-Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin said in a released statement at the time. “Treasury will continue to impose a financial toll on those responsible for Venezuela’s tragic decline, and the networks and front-men they use to mask their illicit wealth.”
Delcy Rodríguez is responsible for a list of crimes longer than a CVS receipt, and she is morally indistinguishable from Nicolás Maduro. But apparently the Trump administration has concluded they want to cut a deal with her. One administration official told the New York Times, “She’s certainly someone we think we can work at a much more professional level than we were able to do with him.”
That’s a very low bar to clear, considering how Maduro did televised dances mocking Trump.
Back in October, the Miami Herald reported:
A group of senior Venezuelan government officials, led by Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge, who is president of the National Assembly, have quietly promoted a series of initiatives in recent months aimed at presenting themselves to Washington as a “more acceptable” alternative to Nicolás Maduro’s regime, according to people with direct knowledge of the talks.
The proposals, funneled through intermediaries in Qatar, sought to persuade sectors of the U.S. government that a “Madurismo without Maduro” could enable a peaceful transition in Venezuela—preserving political stability without dismantling the ruling apparatus.
The central argument, the sources said, was that the Rodríguez siblings represent a “more palatable” version of so-called chavismo — the socialist ideology named for deceased leader Hugo Chávez — for Washington, since neither has been indicted on narcotrafficking charges by U.S. courts. However, former regime officials— whose accounts have been used by U.S. prosecutors in cases linked to the so-called Cartel of the Suns — have implicated both siblings in logistical support and money laundering operations.
There is no “more palatable version of so-called chavismo,” any more than there is a “more palatable” version of jihadism, communism, Putinism, or North Korean Juche.
Reportedly, the Trump administration rejected the Rodríguez siblings’ offer. But that offer doesn’t look all that different from the aftermath of the U.S. operation. President Trump, during his press conference Saturday:
Well, I understand she was just sworn in, but she was, as you know, picked by Maduro. So [Secretary of State] Marco [Rubio]’s working on that directly. He just had a conversation with her, and she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again. Very simple. . . .
You have a vice president who’s been appointed by Maduro, and right now. She’s the vice president, and she’s, I guess, the president. She was sworn as president just a little while ago. She had a long conversation with Marco, and she said, “We’ll do whatever you need.” Uh, she, I think she was quite gracious, but she really doesn’t have a choice. We’re gonna have this done right. We’re not gonna just do this with Maduro, then leave, like everybody else leave and say, you know, “Let it go to hell.” If we just left, it has zero chance of ever coming back.
Rodríguez may have been “quite gracious” in her phone call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but she took a defiant tone in her public addresses in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion.
Sunday morning, President Trump called Michael Scherer of The Atlantic magazine:
In a telephone interview this morning, President Donald Trump issued a not-so-veiled threat against the new Venezuelan leader, Delcy Rodríguez, saying that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” referring to Nicolás Maduro, now residing in a New York City jail cell.
(More on that phone call below.)
Rodríguez’s message on Telegram Sunday night offered a distinct sense that she didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to find U.S. special forces operators at the foot of her bed:
Venezuela reaffirms its commitment to peace and peaceful coexistence. Our country aspires to live without external threats, in an environment of respect and international cooperation. We believe that global peace is built by first guaranteeing peace within each nation.
We prioritize moving towards balanced and respectful international relations between the United States and Venezuela, and between Venezuela and other countries in the region, premised on sovereign equality and non-interference. These principles guide our diplomacy with the rest of the world.
We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.
President Donald Trump, our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war. This has always been President Nicolás Maduro’s message, and it is the message of all of Venezuela right now.
But she also offered the usual hurrahs for 32 Cuban operatives reportedly killed during the U.S. military operation:
Honor and glory to the 32 Cuban brothers who were killed during the criminal military aggression of the United States against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Our condolences to Pdte. Díaz Canel, to the government and the glorious people of Cuba. Fly high, combatants! His example is sown in the sacred land of Simón Bolívar as an example of courage and dignity.
America can trust Delcy Rodríguez about as far as any one of us can throw her. She’s a true believer and an ideological hardliner, up to her eyeballs in the regime’s systemized abuses of the Venezuelan people, and if she and her brother are not running the Cartel de los Soles, they are at minimum fully complicit in the cartel’s crimes.
And she’s the person the United States wants to leave in charge of Venezuela for the foreseeable future?
The Left, Always Blaming America First
If the administration’s approach to Venezuela is confusing, the modern progressive Democrat’s approach is maddeningly morally inverted:
Back in Times Square, hundreds of protestors gathered, many of them carrying signs that read “No Blood For Oil” and “Stop Bombing Venezuela Now,” and marched to Trump Tower in Columbus Circle on Saturday afternoon, condemning the U.S. invasion of Venezuela, labeling it a war crime and a threat to global stability.
Protestors called for global solidarity, particularly with Venezuela, against what they described as U.S. imperialism.
[Luisa Martinez, a member of the Portland DSA and National Political Committee] asserted that Maduro was democratically elected and that any caveats to the condemnation of Trump’s actions would only empower the White House to seize Venezuelan assets like oil reserves.
Not a single independent election monitor would agree that Maduro was democratically elected:
Analyses carried out by the opposition, academics and media organizations have offered strong evidence to suggest that the Venezuelan president lost — by a landslide — to the main opposition candidate, retired diplomat Edmundo González.
A number of countries have already recognized González’s victory, and even countries with leftwing governments once seen as sympathetic to Maduro (such as Brazil, Colombia and Mexico) are demanding proof of his alleged victory — something he has promised but seems increasingly unlikely to provide.
For now at least, the incumbent clings to power, having pulled off what one expert has described as “the largest electoral fraud in Latin America’s history”.
There is no sign that anyone who marched for Maduro yesterday ever marched in support of any of Maduro’s victims — and there have been thousands of extrajudicial killings, year after year. Hundreds of political prisoners suffer in Venezuelan jails.
The only Venezuelan they’ve ever seen as a victim, and someone worth getting upset about, is the guy running and benefiting from all the torture and executions. They are functionally pro-torture and pro-extrajudicial execution.
Just about all these American progressive protesters would characterize Trump as a dictator. But they’ll march in the streets to free an indisputable dictator.
The President and the Press
The president of the United States spoke to Tyler Pager, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, very shortly after he posted the news of Maduro’s capture on Truth Social:
President Trump sounded tired.
It was just after 4:30 a.m. Saturday morning and 10 minutes after he announced on social media that the United States had captured Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela. I had called the president to try to better understand what happened and what comes next. He picked up after three rings and answered a few questions.
Mr. Trump first celebrated the mission’s success.
“A lot of good planning and lot of great, great troops and great people,” he told me. “It was a brilliant operation, actually.”
The call lasted a bit less than a minute.
So . . . one of the New York Times’ White House correspondents has the president’s cell phone number, and that correspondent can call the president directly, and the president answers it, just minutes after announcing a major U.S. military operation.
Then as mentioned above, Trump called Michael Scherer of The Atlantic magazine Sunday morning.
President Trump really can’t stand the institutions that he keeps calling “the failing New York Times,” and “a magazine that’s going out of business,” but he also simultaneously absolutely adores them and yearns for their approval.
ADDENDUM: After a stunning defeat at the hands of Donald Trump and public outrage over worsening scandals and corruption, reports indicate the embattled leader is preparing to flee.
Now, am I talking about Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or Minnesota Governor Tim Walz?