{"id":681739,"date":"2026-01-08T07:49:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T07:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/681739\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T07:49:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T07:49:12","slug":"marco-rubios-venezuelan-gamble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/681739\/","title":{"rendered":"Marco Rubio\u2019s Venezuelan gamble"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a podcast hosted by Donald Trump Jr last year, Marco Rubio ridiculed the Biden administration for making \u201cstupid\u201d concessions to Venezuela\u2019s brutal regime.<\/p>\n

The Democratic president had offered dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro sanctions relief and oil exports \u2014 including a \u201cside deal\u201d with Chevron to let it keep producing in Venezuela \u2014 in exchange for the promise of reforms that never came.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s team should have stopped \u201callowing them to get money\u201d, the secretary of state said. \u201cBut they didn\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Six months on, Rubio<\/a> is the public face of the most aggressive action any US leader this century has taken on Venezuela, culminating last Saturday in a daring night-time military raid to remove Maduro from power.<\/p>\n

With Rubio as his adviser, Trump abandoned the early negotiation tactics pushed by an envoy, Richard Grenell, and set aside \u2014 at least temporarily \u2014 the administration\u2019s stated antipathy towards military interventionism and nation building.<\/p>\n

But while Maduro\u2019s ousting marked a win for Rubio \u2014 the son of Cuban immigrants who has spent his career warning of Latin America\u2019s communist regimes \u2014 it has left him with a unique level of public responsibility for what comes next.<\/p>\n

It is unclear how much Rubio, who harbours his own presidential ambitions, will be able to control.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a chance that he pulls this off,\u201d said Juan Gonzalez, a former Biden and Obama administration official who worked on Latin America. \u201cThere\u2019s a greater chance that this goes sideways and it blows up in Rubio\u2019s face.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the initial hours after Maduro\u2019s dramatic capture, it certainly seemed like Trump\u2019s secretary of state was in the driver\u2019s seat. The US president proclaimed that Rubio, together with defence secretary Pete Hegseth, would \u201crun\u201d the South American country, giving him the chance to reshape the region as he had dreamt of doing for decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to run everything. We\u2019re going to fix it,\u201d Trump declared in the aftermath of the operation.<\/p>\n

The administration quickly backed away from those claims. Rubio \u2014 formerly a champion for Latin American democracy and human rights in the Senate \u2014 has had to defend it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve given Rubio more or less what he wants in the form of a scalp. They\u2019ve given him Maduro,\u201d said a person familiar with the administration\u2019s thinking on Venezuela<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Trump dismissed the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado \u2014 whom Rubio had called among \u201cthe bravest people in the world\u201d \u2014 as a viable contender to govern Caracas. Instead, he left Maduro\u2019s vice-president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, serving in his place. And within days the regime had cracked down on suspected pro-US traitors.<\/p>\n

\"USRubio, left, speaks to the press at Mar-a-Lago following the US\u2019s actions in Venezuela \u00a9 Jim Watson\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you saw Rubio\u2019s public embrace of Maria Corina, and if you saw the administration\u2019s rhetoric surrounding Maduro\u2019s repression and brutality, you\u2019d be surprised to see that they landed in a place where they\u2019re continuing that same oppression and brutality,\u201d the person said.<\/p>\n

Rubio has instead tried to manage expectations. In media interviews a day after Maduro\u2019s capture, he declared that Washington would run \u201cpolicy\u201d in Venezuela<\/a> rather than the country itself. <\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s main goals now in Venezuela are primarily to gain control over its natural resources, including oil; end official ties to drug traffickers; secure Venezuela\u2019s co-operation in receiving deportees; and end Caracas\u2019s partnerships with US adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a process now in place, where we have tremendous control and leverage over what those interim authorities are doing and are able to do. But obviously this will be a process of transition. In the end, it will be up to the Venezuelan people to transform their country,\u201d Rubio said. <\/p>\n

Trump on Wednesday said his administration had struck deals with the regime. Venezuela would now be \u201cpurchasing ONLY American Made Products\u201d, he wrote on social media, and it would sell the US billions of barrels of its oil \u2014 for which the White House said it would loosen sanctions.<\/p>\n

But the Trump administration has put democratic aims, including new elections, on the back burner. Rubio, while working to please Trump, is also aware that former constituents \u2014 including Cuban and Venezuelan Americans \u2014 have expectations of a man who recently charged that the Venezuelan regime could not be trusted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think Marco Rubio wants to return to Miami in three years saying that he tried his best,\u201d said Carlos Curbelo, a fellow Cuban American and former Republican congressman from Miami. \u201cIt is very clear to me that Marco Rubio wants to be the change agent in the Americas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rubio was not always so loyal. He ran against Trump in the Republican primary race in 2016, calling him a \u201ccon artist\u201d. But as a cabinet secretary, Rubio has worked hard to ingratiate himself. <\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone loves working with him,\u201d White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

If Rubio makes another run for the White House, however, Venezuela could be decisive. <\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s Venezuela gamble will have failed if by the end of Trump\u2019s presidency \u201cthe same heads of the military who have embraced and weaponised corruption and narco-trafficking\u201d were still in control, said Andr\u00e9s Mart\u00ednez-Fern\u00e1ndez of the rightwing Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n

Fernandez thinks highly of Rubio and the Trump administration. But Maduro\u2019s \u201cis a regime that has learned to wait out challenges\u201d, he said. <\/p>\n

Republicans on Capitol Hill say their former colleague is the right person for the job. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe president knows that he\u2019s got the right guy in the right place, and Marco knows this region better than anyone,\u201d said James Risch, the Republican chair of the foreign relations committee, on which he worked closely with Rubio for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AVenezuelans in Miami rally after the US\u2019s capture of Maduro \u00a9 Cristobal Herrera-Ulkashkevich\/EPA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

The secretary of state is not the only top Trump lieutenant working on Venezuela. Homeland security adviser Stephen Miller has focused on the country as a source of unwanted migration to the US. Vice-president JD Vance, a more sceptical voice about American interventionism, has also been involved. <\/p>\n

It was Rubio who led a White House meeting of top officials in mid-December to \u201csettle on, sequence and plan the operation, including the decision to implement an economic quarantine that employed US vessels to interdict sanctioned Venezuelan oil shipments\u201d, said a person familiar with the operation.<\/p>\n

In late December, Vance \u201cback-channelled\u201d talks with Qatar to see if Maduro would accept any \u201coff-ramps\u201d the US was offering, the person said. When that failed, Trump, Vance and Rubio became convinced that Maduro was not the \u201ccredible interlocutor\u201d they needed in Venezuela, the person added.<\/p>\n

\u201cRubio\u2019s key contribution is in getting Trump to recognise that Maduro was never going to negotiate in good faith,\u201d said Carrie Filipetti, former deputy assistant secretary for Cuba and Venezuela during Trump\u2019s first term. <\/p>\n

In recent days, Rubio \u2014 a fluent Spanish speaker \u2014 has been the primary link between Trump and Rodriguez. The new Venezuelan leader appears to have chosen a path for now of co-operation rather than resistance towards Washington, including openness to a deal on oil exports. <\/p>\n

Regional experts and Democrats are wary.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"Soldiers<\/a><\/p>\n

Rodriguez was \u201ctotally unreliable and is corrupt and hates America\u201d, Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, said on Wednesday after his second briefing by Rubio in as many days. \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re relying on? What kind of a plan is this?\u201d<\/p>\n

If her tune changes, it could spell trouble for the secretary of state, suggested Benjamin Gedan, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins Latin America Studies Initiative. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is the possibility that Delcy Rodr\u00edguez just starts showing a lot of independence that embarrasses Trump and that he turns to Rubio and says \u2018wait, I thought you were controlling her\u2019,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Michael Stott in Bogot\u00e1, Lauren Fedor in Washington and Myles McCormick in Miami<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a podcast hosted by Donald Trump Jr last year, Marco Rubio ridiculed the Biden administration for making…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-681739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115858385590640101","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}