Watch: Trump insults Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
President Trump told Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro the following about why the United States was offered to invest in Venezuela’s natural resources:
In late January, President Nicolas Maduro and President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, smiled and shook hands at the Venezuelan leader’s gilded Caracas Palace.
The deal they just signed meant that six Americans held in the country would be released in exchange for hundreds of Venezuelan migrants who the Trump administration claimed belonged to the Venezuelan gang Torren de Aragua.
It was the first time in several years that U.S. officials had met Mr. Maduro, a protégé of strongman Hugo Chávez, in person. President Maduro is in his 12th year in office after international observers say the 2024 vote was fraudulent.
Some had hoped that the Grenell deal would ease tensions between Washington and Caracas, perhaps allowing access again to Venezuela’s rich oil reserves.
But since that glorious moment at the palace, America has shifted gears considerably. Instead, experts say Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears to be replacing Mr. Grenell and spearheading an aggressive campaign to topple Mr. Maduro.
Nine months after the Grenell-Maduro deal, eight U.S. warships are circling off the coast of Venezuela, and the largest U.S. aircraft carrier and its three escorts are sailing toward the region. Approximately 10,000 troops are stationed in the area. B-1 and B-52 bombers approached Venezuelan airspace three times in two weeks in an undisputed threat of force.
At least 61 people, many of them Venezuelans, were killed in a U.S. attack on a boat in international waters that the Trump administration said was carrying drugs, without providing evidence. The airstrikes, which the Trump administration has described as part of an “armed conflict” with cartels, were ordered without Congressional approval.
President Trump rejected President Maduro’s offer to maintain power in Venezuela and offer access to Venezuela’s rich oil reserves. Instead, his administration, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, focused its efforts on a campaign to oust President Maduro from office.
The president has launched at least 14 maritime strikes off the coast of South America, ramping up pressure on Maduro. In the latest attack, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on October 29 that four more people were killed in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
President Maduro has shown that he understands exactly what Presidents Trump and Rubio are doing: “They have promised never to get into war again, and they are manufacturing a war,” Maduro said on October 24, after the Pentagon announced that the world’s largest warship, the Gerald Ford, was heading to South America.
President Trump’s offensive comes after President Maduro and his top officials were indicted in 2020 on charges of involvement in a drug-trafficking conspiracy.
A White House official told USA TODAY on October 27 that “the administration’s policy is ‘maximum pressure’ against the Maduro regime” and that “there are no negotiations that could benefit the regime.”
President Trump abandons Maduro’s offer to provide Venezuelan oil
Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany and an intelligence official during Trump’s first term, sought to extract economic victories from Maduro, in line with Trump’s style of dealing in Ukraine and Gaza.
Mr. Rubio, secretary of state and acting national security adviser, is seeking an end to an administration that has opposed the United States for decades and led to an exodus of nearly 7.9 million immigrants, including more than 700,000 who have crossed into the United States.
Grenell continued talks with Maduro’s government throughout the summer, according to analysts and people close to the administration. But they insist that the pressure campaign against Maduro and the attack on the boat bear Rubio’s stamp.
Francisco Monaldi, director of the Baker Institute’s Latin American Energy Program, said Mr. Grenell was negotiating to open up Venezuela’s oil sector in exchange for allowing Mr. Maduro to remain in office.
President Trump told reporters on October 17 that Maduro “gave everything.” “You know why? Because he doesn’t want to deal with America.”
The agreement Mr. Grenell put together did not meet the standards of Mr. Rubio, who has long criticized Mr. Maduro for refusing to sever relations with Cuba and economic ties with Russia and China.
Monaldi said Rubio was able to “reframe” the issue for Trump by narrowing his focus on Maduro and changing the “focus from a focus on democracy and regime change to a focus on drug trafficking and crime.”
Mr. Rubio’s rejection of President Maduro’s oil concessions has upset U.S. energy interests that want to exploit Venezuela’s reserves. Three people familiar with these interests said there was widespread confusion among insiders that forcing Mr. Maduro out could stoke chaos and fear and block their access.
On September 2, President Trump announced the first attack on a boat in the Caribbean, killing 11 Venezuelans.. By early October, President Trump ordered Grenell to halt negotiations with Caracas.
“Mr. Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela. He is a fugitive from American justice who undermines regional security and poisons Americans,” State Department Deputy Spokesman Tommy Piggott said in a statement to USA TODAY on Oct. 28.
Deja vu of overthrowing Maduro
Specific plans to oust Maduro emerged during President Trump’s first term. They crystallized in 2019 when the United States supported opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s failed attempt to seize power.
In January of the same year, Mr. Guaidó declared Mr. Maduro’s presidency illegitimate and announced that he would become Venezuela’s interim president, citing the support of the people and the military. Protests erupted, but Mr. Guaido ultimately failed to gain military support and was unable to ignite an uprising. By the end of 2022, he had lost the support of opposition parties and fled the country.
Mr. Rubio, as a U.S. senator interested in preserving democracy and business interests in Latin America, pressured Mr. Trump to confirm Mr. Guaidó.
“Mr. Rubio was the person who initiated ‘maximum pressure’ in his first term,” said Brian Fonseca, director of the Jack D. Gordon Public Policy Institute at Florida International University. During Trump’s first term, “maximum pressure” referred to a strategy of tough sanctions against Venezuela and charges against Maduro and his top officials on narco-terrorism charges.
During his time representing Florida as a Republican senator, Mr. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who immigrated to the United States before the Florida revolution, frequently criticized Maduro’s “Cuban-style dictatorship.” Rubio has consistently praised the Venezuelan rebels, led by Maria Colina Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. (Machado later tactfully praised Trump, who was eager to win the award, for supporting his cause.)
Edmundo Gonzalez, who ran with Machado’s support, declared victory in last year’s election against Maduro after opposition vote counts showed Gonzalez had overwhelming support. Maduro has refused to relinquish power despite calls from the international community to resign.
Now, with warships gathering just off his coastline, the resistance may be different. Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has welcomed foreign military intervention as a path to democracy in Venezuela.
Machado’s attorney, David Smolanski, told USA TODAY that the opposition is already preparing a transition plan for when they take over. That includes privatizing Venezuela’s oil reserves and opening them up to business, he said.
Evan Ellis, a U.S. Army War College research professor who specializes in Latin America, said Trump officials still hope Maduro’s generals will decide “it’s best to protect themselves and take matters into their own hands.”
That strategy didn’t work during Guaidó’s 2019 coup or when a ragtag group of mercenaries reportedly in touch with Trump officials attempted to overthrow Maduro again the following year. Analysts say the difference now lies in the amount of military power President Trump has concentrated around Venezuela and his willingness to use deadly force.
During Trump’s first term, Trump’s aides reportedly urged him to distance himself from floating ideas about invading Venezuela.
“At the time, there were a lot of people in the organization who said, ‘Mr. President, we can’t do this, this is not a good idea,'” Ellis said.
“This time, no one will say that.”
Boat attacks are pointless against fentanyl
Many of the 61 people killed in U.S. military attacks on boats in international waters were Venezuelans.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the victims included Colombian fishermen and that one of the vessels targeted had sent out a distress call before the US attack. The two survivors of the strike returned to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia. A third survivor was rescued from the water by Mexican troops after surviving another attack on October 27, Hegseth said.
Their repatriation complicated the Trump administration’s argument that those killed in the airstrike were armed combatants against the United States who are legally treated as prisoners of war, or terrorist suspects previously held at Guantanamo or other bases outside the United States.
The Trump administration said intelligence showed the ship was headed to the United States with deadly drugs, including fentanyl.
“For every boat we knock out, 25,000 American lives are saved,” Trump said, suggesting the boat was loaded with enough fentanyl to kill thousands.
Fentanyl is responsible for the majority of American overdose deaths. However, no evidence has been made public that the ship that was struck in the Caribbean was carrying deadly drugs. Human trafficking experts also say that striking individual ships would have little effect on curbing mass distribution.
“The vast majority of drugs come in through legal ports of entry along the Mexican border,” said Mike Vigil, who previously led the agency’s international operations and worked for the agency for 30 years.
“It’s primarily distributed to American citizens,” he says.
President Trump also made the leap by saying international gangs in Venezuela are running this drug trade off the coast of the country, according to the Vigil newspaper.
Vigil said the Venezuelan gang Torren de Aragua, which Trump has linked to the boat, “is not specifically involved in transporting drugs using maritime routes.”
But the administration shows no signs of halting its attacks, even as the 60-day legal deadline for the U.S. to declare war or cease extrajudicial attacks approaches. President Trump has repeatedly indicated that he plans to conduct a ground attack in Venezuela in the future.
