Since Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, consecutive US administrations have sought to undermine his, and his successor Nicolas Maduro’s, governments. Yet by the time Donald Trump left office in 2021, maximum pressure sanctions, diplomatic isolation, military putsches and multi-million dollar bounties had failed to dislodge the country’s ruling socialist party from power. In 2023, Trump complained, “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil.”
Given Trump’s frustration, it should come as no surprise that earlier this year, a battle roared within his second administration over the future of the South American country between two of his top deputies.
On the one hand, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a long-time proponent of regime change in Caracas, recognized opposition politician Edmundo González as the country’s rightful president, opposing attempts to extend Biden-era license to US companies operating in the country’s oil sector, and mobilizing countries across Latin America to follow US lead by designating Venezuela’s “Cartel of the Suns” — a drug patronage network Rubio claims is led by Maduro — as a foreign terrorist organization.
Marco Rubio (center) stands by as Trump delivers remarks about the US military operation in Venezuela in January 2025 (Molly Riley/White House/Wikimedia Commons)
One the other hand, Special Envoy for Special Missions Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence, traveled to Caracas the week after Trump took office to meet personally with Maduro, returning on at least one other occasion to secure the release of US prisoners and cooperation on US deportation flights, and advocating for a broader accommodation with Venezuela’s government that would eschew confrontation and regime change in favor of preferable deals for US oil companies and commitments to box out US adversaries from the country.
As the debate in US media rages over the dramatic military raid and bombing campaign on Jan. 3 that whisked Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores out of their Caracas compound and into US federal custody, all while reportedly killing 100 people, one thing remains clear: Rubio and Grenell’s diametrically opposed visions for the future of the South American country is all but resolved.
The path that Venezuela takes over the coming months and year may depend on which of these visions gain the upper hand, and Trump’s ear, as more pressing domestic concerns and the US midterm elections shift attention elsewhere.
On the surface, it seems that, surprisingly, Grenell’s approach has won out — for now. While Maduro’s brazen, illegal, and unnecessary abduction was clearly a victory for Rubio, María Corina Machado, the opposition leader his South Florida Republican base and allied lawmakers have long rallied behind, will not be entering the Miraflores Palace in Caracas anytime soon.
Trump has seemingly agreed with a CIA assessment that Machado’s faction, represented by former diplomat Edmundo González, who is widely believed to have won the country’s July 2024 presidential elections, is in no position to immediately stabilize and govern the country nor take control of the state apparatus.
This has left the Trump administration working with Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez, a socialist, albeit moderate and pragmatic, leader at the helm of what the US refers to as the country’s “interim authorities,” to secure oil deals for major US companies, and preside over a broader stabilization and recovery plan for the country in the medium-term.
Originally reported by the Miami Herald in October, this deal is reflective of the Qatar-facilitated negotiations led by Grenell. According to the plan, Maduro would step aside, the entire Venezuelan civilian and military apparatus would remain intact, and sanctions on the country would be lifted in exchange for preferential access to US firms in the country’s energy sector, cooperation on US migration goals, and promises to reduce the presence of US adversaries like Russia, China and Iran in the country.
Rubio, on the other hand, together with his South Florida allies, has proven far more uncompromising and maximalist in his demands of the Maduro regime, eschewing any kind of direct diplomacy, lobbying against any sanctions relief, offering full-throated support to the Machado-led opposition, and insisting that Maduro runs a narco-terrorist cartel out of Caracas — and has been for years.
These contradictory approaches quite literally collided earlier this summer to undermine and delay a complex deal that eventually led to the release of Venezuelan political prisoners and migrants detained at El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison — underscoring the chaos, competition, and lack of coordination among top officials in the Trump administration.
The apparent accommodation with Venezuela’s chavista leadership, which remains fully intact after Trump’s decapitation operation against Maduro, has not gone unnoticed in Rubio’s home-turf: Miami. Reporting suggests that South Florida’s Cuban and Venezuelan-American communities, Rubio’s historic base of support, were stunned by Trump’s embrace of Maduro’s socialist vice president, and are now struggling to present cooperation with the remaining chavista leadership as a success that will eventually install Machado into power. Some have even contended that Trump misspoke when he said that Machado did not command adequate respect in the country, even as reporting confirmed that the administration’s view of the opposition had deteriorated in recent months, with no contact between Machado and Trump since October.
Moving forward, Rubio will face challenges managing pressure from South Florida’s Republican base and allied lawmakers who expected that a US-led military operation in Venezuela, about which some have expressed skepticism, would at the very least usher in the country’s opposition. Despite Rubio’s confident statements in later media appearances and briefings to Congress, he looked visibly defeated at the Jan. 3 press conference in Mar-a-Lago, as the current outcome seems to run counter to his vision for Venezuela policy — and that of his major base of support.
Whether coordinated with Rubio or not, recent attempts by Miami-Dade County’s Democratic mayor Daniella Levine-Cava and Florida’s Republican senator Rick Scott to have Trump recognize Machado and González as the legitimate leaders of Venezuela before the former’s meeting with Trump at the White House on Thursday show that Rubio allies will not shy from trying to force a transition as soon as possible before Rodríguez further cements power with US support.
“The path that Venezuela takes over the coming months and year may depend on which of these visions gain the upper hand.”
To these ends, Rubio, who unlike Grenell has cemented a leading role among Trump’s closest national security aides, still has cards up his sleeves, aided by his ideological flexibility, close ties to the Venezuelan opposition, acumen in navigating Washington politics, and future political ambitions. Earlier this month, following pressure from Rubio, Venezuela freed a number of high-profile political prisoners whose releases South Florida politicians and opposition groups in the country had long sought.
The Secretary of State has also made it clear that regime coercion in Caracas, including seizing all unauthorized oil tankers leaving the country, represents a major point of leverage to weaken and eventually topple the regime in his parents’ country of birth, Cuba — a longtime goal of his — however difficult that may be.
Furthermore, Rubio has described a three-phase plan through which free and fair elections will be convened after the country’s US-directed economic stabilization and recovery occurs, ultimately ushering in a much-promised “transition” despite there being no assurances if or when that will happen.
With Maduro gone, it’s plausible Rubio could also be betting on a slow decomposition of the interim authorities, aided by a newfound US diplomatic and intelligence presence on the ground, which could help fracture, weaken, surveil, or recruit other elements in the interim administration supportive of a greater opening to the opposition.
Equally as likely is that Rubio’s true end goal is the demise of the Cuban government, which has historically depended on subsidized oil from the Venezuelan government to sustain its energy grid, even if these shipments have declined since the imposition of oil sector sanctions against Venezuela since 2019.
While Trump called off a second wave of attacks after Rodríguez released the prisoners earlier this month, sufficient pressure by the Trump administration to cut all economic and security ties with Cuba — buttressed by warnings against Rodríguez that she could face something “probably bigger” than Maduro if she doesn’t accede to US demands — might be enough for Rubio.
In New York City, demonstrators rally against the US military operation in Venezuela in January 2026 (Swinxy/Wikimedia Commons)
Yet there are serious questions as to whether cutting off all Venezuelan oil to Cuba will irreparably hurt the island’s economy. In fact, Trump, the CIA and other unnamed US officials have said that the US does not seek the collapse of the Cuban government, but rather to “negotiate with Havana to transition away from its authoritarian communist system.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently said that the US will allow Mexico — which has come under increased pressure by Rubio and his South Florida allies for surpassing Venezuela as the top sender of oil to Cuba — to continue to sell fuel to the island, potentially undermining Rubio’s more maximalist demands on the country amid the upcoming renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in July 2026.
While some have argued that Rubio and Grenell’s diverging approaches to Venezuela reflect a rather typical “carrot and stick” or “good cap/bad cop” dynamic, others have posited that it actually empowers authoritarian leaders like Trump to manage and broker dissent among his top advisers, emboldening his authority as commander-in-chief and the ultimate arbiter on national security matters.
In that sense, it may not matter much that Grenell’s realpolitik approach has largely prevailed, even as he is no longer formally involved in the Venezuela portfolio, while Rubio’s neoconservative pipe dream has been largely derailed, even as he is hailed by some as the new “Viceroy of Venezuela.”
By adjudicating the internal contradictions and divergent priorities among his trusted advisers on Venezuela policy, Trump cements his role as the one calling the shots, especially as pressure grows to show results from the months-long focus on Venezuela and the midterm elections loom overhead.
The president has regularly claimed that he has ended at least eight, if not eight-and-quarter, wars during his second term in office, and it’s plausible that he soon takes credit for breaking the years-long stalemate on Venezuela, too. Thus, the real question may be whether the short-term strategy of regime management preferred by Grenell’s pro-engagement camp prevails over the long-term plan for regime change favored by Rubio’s maximum pressure faction simply because Trump feels satisfied enough with the results so far that he declares victory and moves on to the next war that needs ending.
Meanwhile, the plight of everyday Venezuelans, boxed out of the future of their own country, continues to be treated as an after-thought, as decisions get made on their behalf from Washington and democracy indefinitely deferred.