President Donald Trump ordered the army operation in Venezuela to seize Nicolas Maduro. However within the aftermath, Marco Rubio is within the highlight.
Tasked with overseeing the transition of a post-Maduro Venezuela, Rubio has stepped into his fourth — and doubtlessly riskiest — Trump administration function, and the approaching weeks and months might outline his standing as one of many president’s high advisers. A fixation for Rubio for greater than a decade, Venezuela has now grow to be a high-stakes gambit for Trump that would form his personal legacy.
And at a information convention with Trump following the beautiful seize of Maduro and his spouse, an emboldened Rubio put different world leaders on discover they could possibly be subsequent.
“Don’t play video games whereas this president’s in workplace as a result of it’s not gonna end up properly,” Rubio stated.
As Maduro and his spouse had been making their first courtroom look in New York on federal narcoterrorism and conspiracy costs on Monday, the challenges of a U.S.-led transition had been coming into focus. Rubio was already softening the president’s pronouncements that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela for an unspecified time frame.
“It’s not operating — it’s operating coverage, the coverage almost about this,” he stated throughout an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” contradicting Trump’s message. Rubio stated the U.S. army forces which were amassed close to Venezuela would keep put for now, and a quarantine on sanctioned Venezuelan oil would stay to strain the nation’s new chief, Maduro’s vp, Delcy Rodriguez, to fall in line.
Democrats, already seething over the administration’s choice to maintain Congress at midnight on the Maduro operation, now query how far the administration will go.
“The place will this go subsequent? Will the president deploy our troops to guard Iranian protesters? To implement the delicate ceasefire in Gaza? To battle terrorists in Nigeria? To grab Greenland or the Panama Canal? To suppress People peacefully assembling to protest his insurance policies?” stated Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.
The 54-year-old former senator from Florida has been on the forefront of the more and more aggressive and complicated overseas coverage of Trump’s second time period. Trump first tapped him to function secretary of state, then added nationwide archivist and interim nationwide safety adviser to his portfolio because the president has consolidated management positions throughout his administration.
It’s a outstanding trajectory for Rubio, stated Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett, a former senior State Division official within the first Trump administration.
“Now he is not only influencing, however directing, main only a outstanding engagement in our hemisphere, and doubtlessly, remaking a brand new order, “ Bartlett stated. “How that performs out will actually be not simply the President’s legacy, however actually Secretary Rubio’s legacy too.”
Rubio has had key roles in different main overseas coverage initiatives, any one in every of which is a heavy carry — from Trump’s efforts to keep up a peace settlement between Israel and Hamas and finish the conflict in Ukraine. However inside Trump’s inside circle, Rubio has owned Venezuela. For him, it’s private: As a Cuban American senator in Florida, Rubio was centered on the abuses in Venezuela for 15 years, first beneath Hugo Chavez and now Maduro. The hassle is well-liked in his residence state, the place many Venezuelans and equally displaced Cuban People, together with Rubio’s personal mother and father, sought sanctuary from repressive regimes.
Cuban authorities tv introduced over the weekend that 32 Cuban combatants died within the U.S. army motion in opposition to Venezuela. And Cuba, the place the financial system has been battered by a U.S. embargo, had been counting on sanctioned oil shipments from Maduro till the Trump administration’s quarantine.
Rubio framed Maduro’s arrest as a warning to the “incompetent senile males” operating Cuba, saying “if I lived in Havana and I had been within the authorities, I’d be involved, a minimum of a bit bit.”
With Rubio at his facet, Trump more and more ramped up strain on Venezuela, together with a U.S. army marketing campaign in opposition to alleged drug-smuggling boats that has roiled the Western Hemisphere and considerably escalated on Saturday with Maduro’s seize and removing to the U.S.
The coverage is a big escalation from Trump’s first time period, when his administration elevated and expanded sanctions on Venezuela. Trump publicly threatened to make use of army motion if obligatory and the U.S. formally acknowledged former opposition chief Juan Guaido because the reputable president of Venezuela in 2019. However strain stopped there.
“I believe as Rubio persuaded him, he started to see that it was going to be doubtlessly crucial,” stated John Bolton, who served as Trump’s nationwide safety adviser throughout the first administration and who’s now one in every of his sharpest critics.
But when Rubio has proven Trump the potential worth of a extra aggressive response, he now has to ship on what Trump needs. And his affect with the president — and place because the face of his Venezuela coverage — might lower each methods.
“Rubio’s job is to perform one thing near what the president says may be achieved,” stated Neumann, who served as ambassador to Afghanistan, Bahrain and Algeria throughout the George W. Bush administration.
“He’s between a rock and a tough place,” stated Neumann.
Rubio’s positions have already appeared to shift. The U.S. just isn’t turning to Venezuelan opposition chief Maria Corina Machado, who just lately gained the Nobel Peace Prize, or Edmundo Gonzalez, who tremendously outpolled Maduro within the 2024 election that Maduro then stole. Final January, Rubio referred to as Gonzalez Venezuela’s rightful president.
After assembly with exiled Venezuelan opposition figures final Could, Rubio additionally referred to as for the discharge of Maduro’s political prisoners and the restoration of democracy in Venezuela. Neither of these targets has been raised by Trump or Rubio since Saturday.
“Sadly, the overwhelming majority of the opposition is not current inside Venezuela,” Rubio stated throughout Sunday’s “Meet the Press” interview.
He additionally stated elections in Venezuela are “untimely at this level” regardless of the nation’s structure calling for the vp to succeed to the presidency and arrange elections inside 30 days.
The U.S. has not had a diplomatic presence in Venezuela since 2019. The State Division is making preparations for probably reopening the U.S. embassy in Caracas if Trump decides to take that step, in line with a senior State Division official.
American diplomats who give attention to Venezuela presently are based mostly in neighboring Colombia. Greater than half the international locations in Latin America additionally presently don’t have confirmed U.S. ambassadors. These vacancies, coupled with the Trump administration’s cuts to the U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth and the U.S.’s chief worldwide broadcaster Voice of America, depart Rubio with fewer regional allies and sources.
“The challenges he faces would in standard instances trigger him to rely closely on his senior employees on the State Division and counterparts at USAID and Voice of America,” stated Douglas Lute, a retired Military common and former ambassador to NATO. “That simply emphasizes the challenges he faces.”
Richard Fontaine, the chief government officer of the Middle for a New American Safety, stated Rubio’s dual-hatted roles as secretary of state and nationwide safety adviser complicate his skill to be the purpose individual on a problem as large as Venezuela.
“There’s a cause why you haven’t since Henry Kissinger has the function of Nationwide Safety Advisor and Secretary of State been held by the identical individual,” Fontaine stated. “There are solely 24 hours in a day and you’ll solely be in a single place on the similar time.”
