What is America doing in Venezuela?

Over the weekend on January 3rd, the

Trump administration launched an

operation that ended with the capture of

Nicholas Maduro, the president of

Venezuela. Maduro, not a good person,

not a good guy, a repressive, [music]

brutal dictator who has made the lives

of many, many people miserable.

But there are a lot of brutal,

repressive dictators in this world.

Venezuela is not a leading source of

America's drug crisis. We have a

fentinyl crisis, not a cocaine [music]

crisis. Venezuela's oil reserves, which

we should not be invading other

countries for anyway, [music]

is not an easy source of future wealth

or power for the United States.

President Donald Trump ran for office

promising fewer foreign entanglements.

He wanted to be remembered as a

peacemaker. What are we [music] doing?

>> We are going to run the country until

such time as we can do a [music] safe,

proper and judicious

transition.

>> This was a

profound gamble from an administration

that to a very large extent ran for

office. This time promising an end to

these kinds of [music] gamles,

criticizing those that previous

presidents [snorts] had made in the

past. So what is the collection of

arguments,

views, interests, [music]

factions that led America to this point

[music]

and what comes after it? Joining me

today is Jonathan Blitzer, who has

covered immigration and the Trump

administration [music] in Central

America for the New Yorker. He's

profiled Steven Miller and gone deep

into the drugboat bombings. He's also

the author of the excellent book,

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, [music]

The United States, Central America, and

the Making of a Crisis. As always, my

email, Ezra Kleinshow at NY Times.com.

[music]

Jonathan Blitzer, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. Who is Nicholas

Maduro? He is uh has suddenly become a

household name in the United States. Who

is he? How should we understand

what he represents and and and was?

Maduro has always been um to my mind

kind of middling figure who attached

himself to his predecessor Ugo Chavez

who was a transformative obviously

highly controversial figure in Venezuela

who nationalized the oil industry who um

made uh improving the lives of the poor

kind of central plank of his political

agenda but also consolidated power in

all kinds of ways um flirted with uh

violating the constitution and so on.

Um, Maduro was essentially a member of

that administration uh and became uh

Chavez's appointed successor when Chavez

became sick with cancer and died. And so

Maduro took power in 2013 uh and never

had the charisma of Chavez. Um and

almost immediately when he took office,

you had things start to change the

fortunes of the country. You had the

price of oil drop. Um there was an

economic crisis. you started to have uh

an increase in inflation that got

steadily worse in the 2010s. You started

to have a series of domestic flare-ups

of mass protests which Maduro responded

to by cracking down on the population in

increasingly aggressive ways. This is in

2014, again in 2017. Um, in 2015, the

Venezuelan opposition won congressional

elections and would seem could really

bring Maduro to heal and the response of

Maduro and his inner circle was to

essentially invalidate that victory of

the opposition in Congress and to go on

to try to neuter the power of the

opposition. And what we saw in the years

since was an increasingly brutal

consolidation of power. So, he's someone

who was always a kind of weak personal

replacement to Chavez, who in some ways

channeled all of Chavez's darkest, most

repressive urges and has basically been

at the helm during a period where the

the country has really disintegrated in

many ways. I mean, since 2014, you have

close to 8 million Venezuelans who have

fled the country. That's all been during

Maduro's time as leader. So, Donald

Trump has been talking about deposing

Nicholas Maduro, the previous leader of

Venezuela, since his first term.

Why? And why didn't it happen then? I

mean, the most interesting thing to

those of us following Trump's stance on

this issue during his first term was

that there were real hawks and

hardliners in his administration that

first time who were pushing for more

aggressive direct action uh in Venezuela

and in the region. And the person who

was uncomfortable moving forward was

Trump. He was skeptical of the idea of

putting boots on the ground. He was

skeptical of the idea of overextending

American, you know, involvement in the

region. Um, and so I think probably the

most striking thing has been his change,

the trajectory that kind of he's kept

from Trump one to Trump 2. But I think

the issue, the Venezuela issue for him

has always loomed large. Part of that is

just purely political. Um, you know, the

the South Florida Republican Latino

community, which is obviously very

important to him and is important among

a lot of his supporters, um, and members

of the administration, has always really

been fixated on Venezuela. They see the

Venezuelan regime as being the key to

unlocking uh the kind of downfall of

socialist regimes across the region in

Cuba above all also in Nicaragua. And so

there's always been a real appetite for

high-flying saber rattling rhetoric on

the issue. And Trump initially

understood the kind of priority of

Venezuela in those terms as a political

imperative. But the idea that we did

this for

political support in southern Florida,

that that doesn't track for me. There

have been too many players involved.

Donald Trump is not running for

re-election again, probably.

What were the conceptions of American

interests at play?

>> I mean, there's no question that oil is

is a huge interest for for Trump and

something that he's always been fixated

on. uh it's bothered him and it's

bothered people in his inner circle that

Maduro's predecessor Ugo Chavez

nationalized uh large parts of the

country's oil sector and essentially

forced out American and international

companies in the 2000s. And so there's

been this idea for one thing that you

know American capitalist interests have

been dispossessed that it's a matter of

of of recouping what what was lost. um

there's a sense of opportunity there and

I also think that he's someone who uh I

I do think has grand designs for

asserting American influence in the

region as an as a reflection of his

political power. Um and so I think the

Venezuela issue has always been an

opportunity for him to do that on a big

international stage to really be the

kind of bully that he that he want that

he's wanted to be uh and to to threaten

others in the region. Tell me about the

oil and the geopolitics of oil side of

this because because that does seem to

have been quite compelling to Trump

himself.

>> Yes. And and and and the thing that I've

heard is that inside the administration

there was from the very start of the

current term a tension on the one hand

the hardliners like Rubio and that

broader delegation of Rubio aligned

members of Congress uh wanting the

administration to take increasingly

aggressive action against Venezuela.

roll back, for example, some easing of

the sanctions done during the Biden

administration. The Biden administration

created a special exception for Chevron

um to continue to do some measure of

business in Venezuela. Um, and it seems

like at a certain point the threat was

made to Trump that they that these

members of Congress would block or drag

their feet on the so-called big

beautiful bill, his big domestic

spending bill, if he didn't kind of

chart a harder course against Venezuela.

So, in one sense, he was responsive to

all of those things and conscious of the

need for everyone to be in lock step,

particularly around that that big

domestic spending bill. At the same

time, he was very concerned about the

idea of Chevron losing its foothold at a

time when, you know, a lot of observers

will point out that the US hard line

against Venezuela has allowed other

countries, Russia, Iran to uh China to

establish increasing influence both in

Venezuela and over the Venezuelan oil

industry. Um, and so there was kind of

this this this plan to to sort of try to

manage both things. And I actually think

in some ways the aggression that we've

seen is an outgrowth of the

administration trying to square that

particular circle. Um so so Trump, you

know, ostensibly exceeded to the the

demands, you know, made by hardline

anti- Maduro Republicans in Congress to,

you know, continue to keep these

sanctions um to to try to roll back some

of the Biden administration allowances

on Chevron's uh activity in the region.

Um, and then by the time that bill had

passed, by the end of July, you have the

White House signing this kind of legal

memorandum to essentially justify or at

least set in motion the start of these

boat bombings. I I think Trump thinks

very very actively about the oil issue.

Um, what's unclear to me is what he's

hearing from advisers about the

difficulty of kind of propping the

Venezuelan oil industry back up. I mean,

the big problem has been, you know,

Venezuela is responsible for less than

1% of the world's oil. It's producing

half of what it used to produce uh per

day in the '90s. And so, reestablishing

the industry is going to require huge

amount.

>> Things like $60 billion of investment

roughly over a long period of time in a

place where we don't know its long-term

stability. Yeah.

>> Right. We don't know what Venezuela is

going to look like after this in 5 years

and 10. I mean the

>> the record of this kind of we depose of

the leader we don't like everything's

going to be stable and uh aligned to

American interests for the foreseeable

future is not great and these oil

companies by the way American oil

companies are extraordinarily

riskaverse. I mean, it's not lost on

them that first of all, the Iraq example

is is, you know, uh, looming large in

their mind, but also, you know, all of

these questions that you and I can't yet

answer and that no one really can answer

about kind of the long-term American

plan for Venezuela, all militate against

these companies getting involved in the

oil sector right now, given the

unpredictability of what's ahead. You

you've talked about this in some of your

reporting and other reporting I've read

as a in in part a Steven Miller theory

that there is an effort to

establish

might call it deterrence

um but fear among every leader in the

western hemisphere and that Venezuela

was for a variety of reasons we'll get

into the best uh example

to use the when we talk about Venezuela,

we're not really just talking about

Venezuela. We're talking about making an

example of Venezuela such that every

other leader in Latin America acts

differently when Trump rattles his saber

in the future.

>> Mhm. No, that's exactly right. I mean,

that's always been the case with

Venezuela. When we talk about Venezuela,

we're never just talking about

Venezuela. One former Trump official

said to me at the start of the boat

bombings late last year that you know in

so far as any foreign government was

looking at those bombings and scratching

their heads and wondering what is the

message here? Is this is this going to

come around for us? Well, like you know

mission accomplished. If the idea is to

scare everyone and to make everyone feel

that Trump is crazy enough to do

anything, then you know his his his

actions are achieving some desired

effect. The interesting thing about

Miller's involvement in this is someone

who covered the administration during

the first Trump term

>> and profiled Steven Miller

>> and and spent a lot of time trying to

understand Miller's role in the

government then and now. Um he was not

someone who was any anywhere near this

issue during Trump one which is

unsurprising to those who know Steven

Miller as you know Trump's sort of

immigration adviser a hardliner on

domestic issues. Um, what I think has

has changed and what's been interesting

to see this go around is how Miller has

inserted himself into this space, you

know, when this current administration

took shape and you saw someone like

Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, you

know, I think it it stood to reason that

the administration was going to take a

series of very aggressive actions in the

region and specifically visav Venezuela

because Rubio has always been both when

he was a senator and obviously now a

really ideological player in this space.

someone who has always seen the Maduro

regime as illegitimate. Um, which which

he's he's not he's not wrong to,

particularly after um Maduro lost the

2024 election and declared himself the

winner. But going back years and years,

you know, Rubio has always had an axe to

grind with the the Cuban government.

He's always been among the hardest line

Republicans on these issues, although

he's particularly well-versed in them.

And so he's he's a kind of complicated

player in all of this. unsurprising that

a Trump administration with Rubio as

Secretary of State would be angling for

regime change in Venezuela. Um what I

think has surprised me is the degree to

which Miller putting his thumb on the

scale for intervention kind of changed

the development of the administration's

position in this in the late summer of

last year. Miller is chiefly obsessed

with immigration. And so, you know, to

to someone like Miller, the situation in

Venezuela is responsible for a huge

influx of Venezuelan migrants that that

really exploded during the years of the

Biden administration. So, it again, not

surprising that he would be interested

in the region in that way. But another

thing that I think he's always really

fantasized about uh was, you know, using

increasingly broad military-style powers

for the president to crack down on

immigration enforcement in the United

States. And the Venezuela issue

represents a kind of nexus for for him

into that way of thinking. You know, one

of the first things the administration

did in 2025 was invoke the Alien Enemies

Act. Um an extremely obscure, you know,

18th century law um that basically has

only ever been invoked during wartime.

The United States obviously at the start

of 2025 was not in any war. And yet the

logic that Miller put forward and the

administration adopted was to say that

mass migration represented a kind of

hostile foreign invasion. Um and that

happened primarily that was defined

primarily in terms of Venezuela. Um and

so a lot of the most aggressive

immigration actions taken in the United

States uh were taken over the last year

and a half in in reference to Maduro in

reference to the idea that he posed some

sort of hostile threat to the United

States. And in fact, the whole premise

of of of Miller's thinking was that if

you know, if we bomb these boats and if

the Venezuelan government reacts

harshly, then we can make some kind of

claim that we are in a state of open

hostility with this country and

therefore need to take more dramatic

action within the country. So you have,

you know, 600,000 uh Venezuelans living

in the United States with temporary

protected status, which is exactly that,

a temporary provisional status. Um, you

have at least a h 100,000 other

Venezuelans who came into the United

States during the Biden years through a

parole program which was always going to

leave them in a precarious position

because that was just a program designed

to get them into the country lawfully.

They would then have to apply for some

more lasting status. Those people are,

you know, living in a an intense sort of

limbo right now. A lot of their work

authorizations have been cancelled. So,

I think the Venezuelan population in the

United States has always been a very

ripe target. I mean, it should be said

of Miller. Maybe it no longer needs

being said. He's smart. You know, the

Venezuelan population is really ripe in

in Millerite terms to be exploited

because there are people who have

arrived recently in the last couple of

years who were kind of on these sort of

the the legal fringes, you know, with

status that will eventually expire. And

and the last thing I'll say is something

that I I was guilty of of of dismissing

a bit during the Biden years. Um, you

know, Republicans, I found myself in in

conversations with congressional

Republicans during the Biden years who

spoke very seriously about the idea of

the US bombing fentinel labs in Mexico,

and I kind of rolled my eyes and thought

it was a lark and just a bit of

high-flying [snorts] rhetoric, you know,

while they were in the opposition, the

political opposition. It's something

that Trump had openly spoken about

during Trump's first term and they were

basically brought to heal by, you know,

the various kind of establishment

players, the Department of Defense,

>> very specifically the Secretary of

Defense.

>> Correct. And I think that gets to

something I want to talk a little bit

about cuz you're we're bringing in the

staffing here.

>> Yeah. And every administration action is

an emergent property of the people

around the president and the president

himself. Tell me just a little bit about

the the the difference between the kind

of staffing coalitions here in in Trump

one and Trump 2 and and the way those

conversations ended up playing out.

>> I mean, I think that's everything. I

think you're right to identify that. I

mean the the one um the the kind of the

one response I get from everyone who'd

been involved in this issue during Trump

one which ironically includes people who

ideologically are more predisposed to

interventionism and and regime change

than some of the current players is that

in Trump 1 there was this constant sense

that okay key elements of the defense

department are going to say look we

can't do this. One person was saying to

me yesterday, a former high-ranking

State Department official during Trump 1

said to me, you know, Trump and the kind

of more hawkish members of his cabinet

were told the first goound, this has

never been done before. That was a

refrain that that particularly bothered

a lot of the the real Trump loyalists

that they were kind of told, "No, you

can't do this thing. You want to do this

transformative thing. It's just not

done." Uh, and that was taken as a kind

of taunt and a challenge to some degree,

certainly for someone like Miller. Um,

but I think that was the bottom line.

And I think interestingly, you know, in

the current configuration of his

adviserss, there is no one who could

impose a meaningful check on, you know,

Trump's worst impulses or on Miller's

worst impulses. And and the one person

who kind of represents a a more whatever

sort of establishment grounded type

voice happens to be one of the most

ideological people in the

administration, that is Marco Rubio on

this particular issue. That said,

interestingly, um, at the start of the

current administration,

um, Miller brought up this idea of

bombing fentinel labs in Mexico. It was

something that brought together all of

his kind of pet projects and ideological

and and and frankly racial obsessions,

the idea that, you know, the Mexican

government was allowing for cartels to

export people and drugs into the United

States. And he was essentially told, you

can't, why would we do this? This would

be counterproductive in all of these

ways. We actually have a pretty strong

working relationship with the current

Mexican administration. It's not a

relationship the Mexican government

wants to tout particularly, but like

they're doing everything we want them to

do. They've helped us with drug

interdiction. They've helped us, you

know, increase enforcement along the

border. All of these kind of traditional

things that the Mexican government has

actually taken a very active role in

doing behind the scenes. Um, why would

we openly provoke them? They're our

largest trading partner. there would

just be kind of catastrophic downstream

consequences if we were to take this

kind of action there. And so even in the

current administration, that message was

sent to someone like Miller. Um his

response essentially was, "Okay, well,

let's find somewhere else to bomb."

Okay, but I I want to hold on this for a

minute because they didn't just find

somewhere else to bomb. They found

something else to bomb. And this has

been one of the strangest dimensions of

the arguments around Venezuela, of the

high-profile bombing of the drug boats.

America has a profound fentinel problem

and fentinel comes from among other

places, China and Mexico. And fentinyl

is very very hard to stop because you it

is such a potent synthesized

concentrated molecule that you can make

a an amount you could carry in pockets

>> that can kill huge numbers of Americans

and and does kill huge numbers of

Americans.

>> Meanwhile, they appear to have moved to

bombing cocaine smuggling. And I'm not

saying cocaine is great, but it was not

a major issue in either the 2020 or 2024

election that America has a huge cocaine

problem. So there has been this weird

movement from we have this big fentinel

problem, we need to do something about

it to we're bombing these boats that are

allegedly smuggling cocaine. Yeah.

>> And it's perplexing.

>> Yeah. I mean it's perplexing if you try

to disentangle it logically. I mean it

is extraordinarily cynical and you know

someone had told me at the defense

department that quite literally the the

the rationale was well we want to do

something the phrase they all love to

use is kinetic. We want to do something

kinetic. We want to do something that's

never been done before. We want to show

that Trump is you know stronger and more

serious than any of his predecessors.

We'll literally pick a different target.

The the the bombing of those you know

boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific

are exactly that. I mean to to your

point, you know, the president comes out

and says these are this is an act of

self-defense. Um drug overdoses are up.

You know, there are hundreds of

thousands of Americans who've died as

>> well actually fell over the are falling

recently. That's true. That's true.

>> But drug overdoses are are high in a

genuine disastrous problem, but from

fentinel primarily

>> 100%. And as everyone points out, I

mean, if you look at Coast Guard data

and all of that, none of this is coming

through the Caribbean. And what's more,

the cocaine that's coming through the

Caribbean and the eastern part of the

Pacific tends to have as its destination

European cities, uh, not American ones.

Um, and so I don't think there was any

serious substantive point behind

selecting these targets as a matter of,

um, you know, curbing the drug trade. I

think it had a lot more to do with

asserting a a a new raw sort of power

and sending a broader message. Um, and

so I but but I think yeah, it's utterly

perplexing. It's it's in many ways

nonsensical. Um, I have to say Trump's

pardoning of Juan Orlando, the the the

Honduran ex-president who was convicted

who, you know, who's charged and

convicted in almost precisely the same

way, obviously short of this kind of

military intervention to extract Juan

Orlando from Honduras in the way that

Maduro was extracted from from

Venezuela. there was someone who was

charged in the Southern District of New

York uh is now being held in Brooklyn.

Um the people who the the people at the

Department of Justice who worked on

those charging documents and those

investigations go back to Trump's first

term. uh one of the most prominent

players in that investigation in the

southern district of New York uh was a

guy named Emil Bove who you know now you

know was a pro you know prosecutor in

that in that division um during Trump

one and then eventually became Trump's

personal lawyer then served at a high

level during Trump's uh at the start of

Trump's second term in the department of

justice and has since been nominated and

confirmed as an appellet court judge. he

was the person who was largely involved

in helping prepare that research showing

how Wan Orlando had been involved in the

drug trade. Um there wasn't a lot of

controversy around the charges brought

against him. And nevertheless, Trump at

the end of November in a move that

frankly is inexplicable really in every

sense.

>> I still don't understand how that

happened. You don't either. You're

you're telling me that you don't have an

explanation? I mean the the explanation

as I see it I mean there is what Trump

himself said which was this was a Biden

frame up because technically uh Juan

Orlando was you know convicted and

sentenced during the Biden years. Again

that flies in the face of everything we

know about how the case against Orlando

was Orlando was built during the first

Trump administration. you know, Wendo at

a certain point wrote an obsequious

letter to Trump that um that Roger Stone

delivered to him basically comparing

both of them to, you know, kind of

victims of American American justice

run. None of these things justify the

pardoning of Juan Orlando and and least

of all at a time when the current

administration is is saying above all

that the reason why it has um ousted

Maduro from power and brought him to the

United States for trial is because he's

an arot terrorist. These are exactly the

same charges brought against Wonderland.

Um, and so I mean it pretty much voids

any pretense that American interests

right now in Venezuela have to do with

stemming the drug trade. Um but that was

it was the randomness of how the

administration shifted from a a not

illegitimate concern about fentanyl labs

in parts of Mexico say to the

indiscriminate bombing of you know small

drug boats in the Caribbean um is is you

know really I think a product of a

political calculation above all. When

you say what they want to do is

something kinetic, which is the

Orwellian way that uh violence gets

described in in military action,

>> it seems to me what they wanted to do

was something that was spectacle. that

there is a certain amount of

governing or propagandizing or signal

sending through spectacle

and the release of the drone videos,

>> you know, that then, you know, you see

the eradication and and and killing of

these people on these boats that they

were looking for something that was

television. They were looking for

something that worked as vertical video

on X. I mean, the photos of the like

makeshift situation room at Mara Lago

during this operation and they have a

huge screen showing X with a search for

Venezuela on it. The the whole thing

seems so built around spectacle. Maduro.

I mean, the photos, the release of him

that I mean, I think you have to see

this as this might have actually been in

one of your pieces or certainly in

somebody's piece that I read in

preparing for this, but but propaganda

through force.

>> Yeah. No, it's exactly. It was a phrase

used by a former Trump administration

official in describing this. No, you're

absolutely right. It's also worth

pointing out um you know what was

happening in the United States at the

time at the start of these boat

bombings. Um, you know, there was also,

you know, an increased militarization in

American cities related to this

immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, in

Chicago. And you know, one thing that a

number of officials have made the point

to me about and I think it's it's well

taken is, you know, part of the kind of

general logic here, and as you say, it's

visual. Um, it's kind of atmospheric,

is, you know, making the milit making

military action a daily presence in

American life in every sense. Um, so

this was all happening simultaneously.

Um, I think that the the strangeness to

to my mind about how Venezuela emerges

as this particular target that serves

all these different, you know, the

political ends primarily is that there

were different factions within the Trump

administration that actually had

different views on how the United States

should engage with Venezuela. It's a

genuinely complicated question. I mean,

you have uh a repressive dictatorial

president who does have ties to the drug

trade. there's no question. Who, you

know, refused to recognize uh a a

democratic election, who's, you know,

done all of these obviously, you know,

horrific crimes. How do you engage with

him? There are long-standing sanctions.

Those sanctions seem to be emiserating

the population, but haven't really

dislodged Maduro himself from power. Um,

previous diplomatic efforts have all run

up against just the bottom line that

Maduro would never negotiate his own

ouster. That's always been a kind of

diplomatic catch in any broader design

for the region. Um, and so, you know,

there was an element within the Trump

administration early on that favored a

more consiliatory approach. It was

epitomized by Rick Grenell, um, special

envoy who who flew down to Caracus, met

with Maduro, uh, achieved some small

successes, for example, got the

Venezuelan government to release

Americans held in Venezuelan prisons,

convinced the Venezuelan government to

start accepting deportation flights from

the United States. So, there were these

kind of incremental um, I don't know

what you would call them, achievements

or gains. uh made from that more

consiliatory approach. But someone like

Grenell was quickly outgunned by the

combination of Rubio and his ideological

vision for the region and regime change

and then people like Miller who brought

to the issue these other concerns and so

it's kind of a weird confluence of the

different interests of people at play

such that this becomes a kind of natural

target. And the one through line I would

say given the kind of differences among

the the various actors involved inside

the administration was the feeling that

at the end of the day what would the

fallout actually be for the

administration if it started to take

increasingly aggressive action against

Venezuela. You know Maduro is an

international pariah. Um it's not a

country that's contiguous with the

United States in the way that Mexico is.

You know, there was a feeling of like

how I mean, and not to not to make this

sound too simple, but I have to say I've

been struck in in some of my

conversations with people on the inside

describing what the thinking was boiled

down to this sense of

can this really hurt us that badly? Like

this is a kind of a perfect theater for

us to experiment in these ways because

the blowback won't be as substantial as

it would be elsewhere. In today's super

competitive business environment, the

edge goes to those who push harder, move

faster, and level up every tool in their

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>> So the Trump administration

I think has described what they think

could go right here which is that you

have a pliant government in Venezuela

that does what we want them to do which

leads to

more oil exports which leads to fewer

migrant outflows. Seems like a tall

order, but what could go wrong here? If

we're looking back in a couple of years,

and this looks like a signal

>> catastrophe.

>> Mhm.

>> What happened? I would say there are two

ways of of grouping the categories of

what could go wrong because there's just

a vast amount of things that could go

wrong. The first would be let's say that

you know Maduro's been removed and now

the administration has elevated uh

hardliner and deli Rodriguez to this new

role as interim president. Um in this

world where the US now basically begs

off or sort of drifts away. Um, you have

a a regime in Venezuela that is even

harder line that's been backed into a

corner that's going to crack down in I

think even new ways on the Venezuelan

population that's there. Um, and I think

what you've effectively done is you've

really neutered the political opposition

in the country. I mean, after years of

the Venezuelan opposition, um, really

trying to assert itself and trying to

build a kind of popular mandate. It's

always been a problem for the Venezuelan

opposition of finding a way of

continuing to seem relevant to the Venez

the Venezuelan people when even after

they win elections, the government just

refuses to recognize those results and

everyone goes back to the status quo.

The Venezuelan opposition leader just

won the Nobel Peace Prize, dedicated it

to Donald Trump,

and Trump just dismissed her.

>> Dismissed her and saying, "Yeah, she

doesn't have the the juice to run the

country."

>> Yeah. And I think that was the biggest

concern for people who have been

following the opposition in particular.

That was always the concern for Muria

Corino Machalo, the the the Nobel

laurate and and leader of the Venezuelan

opposition, an incredibly charismatic

figure. Um who, you know, wasn't the

candidate who stood for election in

2024. Um she had been barred from

running for office. Uh instead, it was

someone she backed, a a a diplomat, a

kind of older stately diplomat. um who I

think won in large part because of

Machado's advocacy for him and her

presence and her courage. Um and I think

there was always this concern that her p

her per particular gambit has been the

only way to really meaningfully get rid

of Maduro is to depend on the direct

foreign intervention of the United

States. if you put all of your, you

know, uh, stock in the idea that the

Americans are going to come dislodge the

regime and usher in some sort of

democratic restoration when Trump

doesn't do that, you are discredited and

you are marginalized, which seems to be

what's happening. So that's the the sort

of first order of bad outcomes is

exactly this, that the administration in

some form or another persists. The

hardliners continue to exert major

influence in the country relatively

unchecked. uh there's further domestic

crackdowns and the Venezuelan opposition

such as it is is now kind of completely

at sea. The other universe of

possibilities is that there is a power

vacuum. um that you know there's a

careful kind of precarious um balance to

how the current situation is persisting

where you have a group of armed

vigilante groups known as collectivos

who have essentially uh operated at the

behest of the regime but are in some

ways free agents. You have elements of

the military who are you know very

paranoid about their standing who have

you know access obviously to weapons to

drugs to money. uh you have a contingent

of Colombian rebels operating along the

border. You have the potential for an

immense amount of uncontrolled violence

and intense ongoing factionalism that if

you, you know, kind of remove one piece

from this equation, all hell will break

loose. So, these are just sort of tamer

summaries of some of the possibilities,

but but the the potential outcomes could

be quite grave. I have to say, frankly,

I I don't I don't know what's coming. I

mean, I don't know what it means for the

current administration to say, as it

has, in explicit terms, that if the now,

you know, acting president, Deli

Rodriguez, doesn't do what we want her

to do, she'll suffer a fate worse than

Maduro. I mean, I don't, it's hard to

imagine any government, least of all, a

government full of chavistas that have,

you know, consolidated all of this power

for now decades just exceeding to that

idea that they're just puppets of an

American administration. Certainly, you

know, when it comes to American

intervention in the region, there are,

you know, a thousand cautionary tales of

what it means for the United States to

have this kind of prolonged involvement

in the country. And what's more, to take

this kind of aggressive military action,

I mean, needless to say, we haven't

talked about the fact that there wasn't

congressional authorization for this. I

mean, credible violation of

international law.

>> Exactly. I mean, you take take your

pick. I mean,

>> Maduro is a bad guy, right? He is a

genuinely bad guy.

>> Yes.

>> There are a lot of bad guys leading

countries. Yes.

>> Uh, as Donald Trump has said before,

he's exchanged love letters with Kim

Jong-un

>> and and so there is something very I

feel like when you get into these kinds

of debates, you I mean I don't want to

defend Nicholas

>> Maduro.

>> On the other hand, this is clearly not a

he is bad is clearly not a standard that

we are applying across the world. And if

we did start applying that, I mean,

America truly as a world's policeman

going in, I mean, should we, you know,

go arrest uh the leader of Saudi Arabia

for killing a, you know, journalist who

was writing for the Washington Post and

>> hacking him up with a bone saw, at least

allegedly.

>> Well, and this is your point, too, about

the history of American involvement in

the wider region in Latin America. I

mean, the United States government

propped up some of the worst actors for,

you know, decades. Um,

>> we're negotiating with Putin right now.

>> Exactly. I want to get it a bigger

picture point that reflects the oil, the

drugs, the socialist leader of Venezuela

and the sort of Marco Rubio domino

theory about Cuba. And there's this

feels like a war or an operation,

whatever you want to call it, out of the

80s.

out of a time when the big drug is

cocaine,

out of a time when the global economy is

dependent on oil as opposed to moving to

renewable energy supply chains which

China is racing ahead of us on and

Trump [snorts] is, you know, devastating

in America

when there's more fear that socialism

might, you know, be on the rise and be

an attractive ideology to people.

Nobody's looking at Venezuela as a

successful country that might inspire a

lot of imitators

that I I can run through the

constellation of arguments being made in

favor of this,

but they all have this quality of being

like adjacent to reality as it how like

there's an energy argument, but the

energy argument is the one that would

have made sense in the 80s not the one

nobody thinks that first we are a huge

energy exporter at this point America is

not you know dependent on others we do

not have an energy independence problem

and to the extent we do have a problem

with the future it is that China is

wrecking us right now on things like the

solar supply chain

>> uh you know and the expectation is not

that you know the future will be won by

whoever has access to the deepest oil

reserves again fentinyl not cocaine is

the drug problem.

There just isn't a huge problem with

socialist strong men taking power all

over Latin America. I mean, it's a

disaster for the Venezuelan people, but

but that's a a somewhat different issue

from at least the American perspective.

There just seems to be something

slightly out of time about it. I know

it's a great observation. I mean, that

the 80s overlay is is particularly

striking to me, too, when you think

about also immigration policies coming

out of this administration. I mean, uh,

the hostility to immigrants in in

general in many ways is an attempt to to

rewrite, um, some of the policies

written in the 1980s, you know, the 1980

refugee act, that's been all but gutted.

I mean, the idea of asylum refugee

practice gone. Um, one of the great

ironies to me, uh, in in Trump's sort of

new view of alliances in the region is

his alliance with Naji Boule, the the

authoritarian president of El Salvador.

I'm thinking particularly among other

things about how when the administration

first um invoked the Alien Enemies Act,

it sent a group of some 250 Venezuelans

accused really in almost every case

without basis or evidence of belonging

to this Venezuelan gang, Tenderua to a

notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison.

The Salvadoran government got, you know,

$5 million to hold them for an

indefinite period of time. They were

brutally tortured. They were held in

communicado. to someone like me, you

know, who spends a lot of time thinking

about kind of the long sweep of American

uh foreign policy and immigration policy

and kind of how they're intertwined over

time, it was incredibly striking to see,

you know, after years, particularly

during the first Trump term of

villainizing immigrants on the basis

that, you know, many of the Central

American immigrants who had arrived in

the United States in recent years were

somehow members of the Salvador and gang

MS-13, which never mind that it began in

the United States, was a kind of scourge

that defined the region in the, you

know, the early 200 thousands and led to

large numbers of people showing up at

the border during the first Trump

administration. Now you had Venezuelans

being accused by the government of

belonging to a Venezuelan gang. The

target had just changed and now the ally

in prosecuting that case just as it had

been in the 80s was a hardline

Salvadoran regime in the region. Um that

I think in some ways Trump um really

wants to emulate. I mean the I mean it's

in some senses it's ridiculous to to

suggest that the president of El

Salvador right now is a model for Trump

given just his kind of unrivaled power

on the world stage. But um one of the

things that the Salvadorian government

has done in recent years has been to

basically suspend the constitution and

run the country from month to month in

what's been called a state of exception.

That is almost exactly what the Trump

administration fantasizes about in ways

you know both both literal and

figurative. So, I think, you know, in

terms of why that kind of mode of

thinking still seems to appeal to Trump

and to some of his hardline ideologues,

um, I can kind of see it as a throwback

to an era of American interventionalism.

Um,

un unbridled

sort of demonstrations of force and

power. Um, you know, there there's been

reporting about the fact that Maduro, as

a kind of attempt to plate the

administration, basically offered his

country's oil up to the administration.

The administration refused it. Um, which

again raises the question of this being

more about a show of force. It's a very

strange thing. And and but I think

you're right. I think kind of a lot of

the ideological thinking around this has

a kind of hory8s era element. Um, and if

you kind of poke it a little bit

further, particularly in the context of

Venezuela and this sort of domino theory

almost in reverse of if you topple a

socialist regime in the region then

others will fall. You really start to

see the radicalism of this old hardline

Rubio position on Cuba, which he has not

really budged on uh in his time in

public office. He has always been

utterly hardline and uh stubborn on the

question of needing to overthrow the

Cuban government. And and again that's a

very um oldw world backwardslooking I

mean this is not to defend the abuses of

the Cuban government which are which are

obscene really in every sense. Um but

again it is a mode of thinking that is

as you say it's it's it's it's

um very dated. How do you understand who

is now running Venezuela?

And to the degree that we have been

perfectly clear, I mean what at least

Trump and Rubio agree on in their

somewhat different statements is that

the acting president of Venezuela has to

do what we want her to do.

>> Yeah.

>> What do we want her to do?

>> Yeah.

>> Again, I mean, not to not to not to

swing and miss on you. I I don't exactly

know what the US expectation is for, you

know, Deli Rodriguez, the the interim

president.

planning I mean about how to run

Venezuela.

>> Yeah, it does not seem to me to be the

case. Deli Rodriguez, the the acting

president of of Venezuela is a a strange

person for the US to elevate. Deli

Rodriguez is is someone who before

Maduro was in power was basically a

middling government bureaucrat during

the regime of Chavez. Her fortunes

changed when Maduro came to office. her

brother uh became the chief political

strategist for Maduro and she with him

started to have an increasingly active

role in overseeing his government. So at

a certain point she was in charge of the

foreign ministry then she became in

charge of the economy and eventually

took on the oil portfolio was widely

regarded as someone who was politically

ruthless uh someone who was a true

believer and one of the most sort of uh

loyal uh and ideological members of the

regime. her father had been tortured and

killed at the hands of a pro- US

Venezuelan administration. And it's been

said that she's always harbored a sense

uh of agrievement and victimhood as a

result of that. Um and she uh is for all

of her ruthlessness also known to have

managed somewhat competently under the

circumstances in trying given this

terrible hand the country has been dealt

economically to you know stabilize you

know inflation, try to increase oil

production. Um but she's someone who uh

you know is deeply implicated in all of

the the gravest misdeeds of the

administration of the regime. And so for

example her brother was the person

responsible basically for forcing

through the fraudulent election of 2024.

So she is basically at the center of all

of the most controversial elements uh of

the Maduro regime and its actions and

naturally during Trump's first term was

actually sanctioned for this by the

Trump administration. Amazing [gasps]

how things work out.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, as one former

Trump administration official told me,

you know, if if your whole logic has

been that Maduro is an illegitimate

president and that his regime is

illegitimate, what does it mean to

remove him and then replace him with his

number two, someone who is implicated in

every misdeed of the Maduro regime? Um,

I know that there there is a complicated

problem the administration has to solve

and this has always been on the table

and was always one of the reasons why

the United States shouldn't have gotten

involved as precipitously as it has and

that is it's not clear the best way

forward without Maduro. I mean, the

Venezuelan opposition um won national

elections in 2024, but the country is

still in the strangle hold of the regime

and the military and the opposition

figures uh who won that 2024 election um

and who now have kind of this prominent

role on the international stage um

make very uncomfortable the existing

powers in the country. And so there's

always going to be this question of

whether or not the Venezuelan opposition

can coexist with the hardline elements

of the military that remain acting in

the country and don't want any of their

interests touched. So that was always

going to be a conundrum under any

circumstance if the current leadership

was removed. And so the logic seems to

be that in picking someone like Deli

Rodriguez to be the kind of interim

figure that calms the nerves of the key

players in the military, in the

government, uh the interior minister,

the head of the armed forces. But those

guys aren't naive. I mean, those guys

certainly see what course this puts them

on. And particularly when you have the

administration now being explicit about

the fact that if Rodriguez does anything

that the administration doesn't like,

they'll remove her. Um I I mean I guess

the thinking seems to be that that will

spook people maybe into agreeing to

leave the country, but that's never

really been the case. Um very very

unclear what the broader calculus is

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It all just reminds me a lot of Iraq and

and and in this particular way and I'm

not saying the these countries are not

the same. They do not have the same

internal divisions. I'm not saying it

will go the same way. I have read over

the past however many years a number of

books trying to reconstruct

how we ended up how America ended up on

this completely optional chosen war.

>> Yeah.

>> In in Iraq. And and and one of the

things you see when you you begin to try

to answer that question like just why

like why did we end up doing that?

>> Yeah.

>> Is there was no there's no single

answer. What there was were a bunch of

factions

that each had their own reason for

wanting this done that as a accumulation

[clears throat]

>> it was enough to push the decision-m

over the finish line. you know, the

people who hated Saddam Hussein for

humanitarian reasons, the people who

really did believe in WMDs, the people

who wanted the oil, the people who

wanted to export democracy, the people

who wanted to show the world that

America was back and you couldn't mess

with us. And you sort of like kept

stacking these up. You know, George W.

Bush is like, you know, this guy tried

to kill my dad,

>> right? And no one of them was good

enough, but all of them together

just created enough

pressure that it ended up happening. And

this has that strange emergent quality

to me where invading Venezuela for the

oil is stupid because we don't need oil

at the moment and oil prices are low and

we shouldn't invade countries for oil

anyway and the global energy system is

moving over and it just like nobody

would have said that makes sense.

>> Invading Venezuela because Madura is

bad. Well, there are a lot of bad

leaders around the world and that's

against international law anyway. We can

go to the UN and try to, you know, get a

security council resolution, but

invading Venezuela because we have a

drug problem, our drug problem just

isn't cocaine. It just isn't. Invading

Venezuela because we're trying to

destabilize a supporter of Cuba.

Again, like that's absurd, but is Marco

Rubio's position in part. Like every

single one of these is so far beneath

the level. It seems to me that would

lead to America deposing the leader of

another country with truly unpredictable

results with also no effort to

manufacture consensus in the country. No

significant post-war planning or you

know post you know what if what if the

whole thing just doesn't work.

>> It it just has that quality of

>> you almost like can't track back you can

track back how we got here. Mhm.

>> But no thread is clear enough to also

then explain what level of commitment or

even what level like what governing

interest we are going to have in the

aftermath in a way that just makes me

very nervous. I'm not again I'm not

saying it goes the way Iraq did but but

it just reminds me of that in that

respect. Well and and I I think to come

back to a point you made earlier. I

think it's all very well taken and and I

also think it's just so much the product

of the personalities involved and in

some ways that's the scariest prospect

here is that it's sort of the happen

stance confluence of just individual

positions or or predispositions of

particular people you know none of whom

I think it's fair to say are

um people of a high degree of integrity

and we're talking about someone like

Pete Pete Haggth whose you know primary

concern as I understand it in this in

this configuration is to get on Miller's

good So like that conditions maybe his

acquiescence to Miller's harder line in

a way that a previous Secretary of

Defense would draw a line and say no. Um

you've got Rubio with this age-old

ideological obsession that aligns with

uh a kind of a jaundist view that Trump

has of the world that hearkens back to

the 80s but at the same time also

represents a misunderstanding of of

recent developments. You know, one

former Trump administration official I

asked this question to just the other

day, this person had been involved in a

lot of the decision-making around

Venezuela in the first Trump term, and I

sort of said, "What what's changed?" I

mean, Trump initially was reticent to

get involved in this kind of direct,

overt way. Now, obviously, he's

delighting in it. How do you explain

that shift? Um, the only thing I see

that's changed is that there was a a

rationale in the first Trump term that

we need to establish democracy or

support democracy in the region. Now,

that's not even on the table. there

isn't even a gesture made in that

direction. And the person went on to

enumerate basically the fact that some

recent developments that all occurred

during the Biden years and that were

obsessions for Trump in a certain sense

can seem to be aligned with the

Venezuela issue. Uh the rise in overdose

deaths again to your point that's

fentinyl that is not cocaine but it

doesn't sort of matter in the kind of

rough whatever it is logic of the

current uh administration. Um, there's

the idea of the immigration problem.

Again, to your point, sure, there are a

large number of Venezuelans who have

arrived in the United States in recent

years, but an intervention like this

does not curb the immigration issue at

all. In fact, if anything, it unleashes

another dimension of it. And then, you

know, the last thing was I'm trying to

remember what the last thing was, but

you're hearing what I'm saying. I mean,

they're all these kind of very notional

ideas that that that that Trump has kind

of latched on to and they're kind of I

do think reflect a kind of warped vision

of what's happening in the region. Um,

but

>> well, there's always there's also

supposed to be an idea pushing the other

direction. We keep talking about Trump

and what Trump wants.

>> But something that Trump said in his

often contradictory but but nevertheless

repetitive way across the uh campaign,

something we were told about him.

>> Yeah.

>> Was that he doesn't want more wars,

doesn't want more foreign entanglements.

>> He ran in 2016 as an opponent of the

Iraq war. We can argue about whether or

not he actually was uh when that was

happening, but he certainly ran as a

critic of it in 2016.

And one thing we were endlessly told by

magaligned figures in this period was

that well the the good thing about

Donald Trump is that if he's in office

he's not going to waste American blood

treasure uncertainty

on going off on adventures in other

countries

where we don't know how they'll end up.

>> Yeah. And so the the bull work on this

was supposed to be a a a kind of MAGA

isolationism.

What happened to that?

>> Yeah.

You know, I I don't know that this is a

um a meaningful response per se, but I

there is to my mind a kind of hermetic

logic to the MAGA view of things and to

Trump's view of things in particular.

and and it's a little bit the idea that,

you know, action has to be taken to

continue to prop up some of the lies and

some of the talking points that have

come to define, you know, Trump's most

visible public positions. So if you're

always talking about the fact that, you

know, immigrants are criminals and that

specifically Venezuelan immigrants are

members of a violent gang and that that

violent gang is invading the country and

it's invading the country at the hands

of a foreign dictator who's trying to

sow discord and and and instability

through immigration, then if you follow

that through to its logical conclusion,

if we put the word logical in scare

quotes, you have something like this

kind of direct confrontation with Maduro

and eventually his ouster. The fact that

there were no lives lost among American

soldiers in this operation,

I think, contributes to the sense inside

the administration this was a resounding

success. And while there is a kind of um

>> because we know these things are judged

>> simply

>> the moment you capture the

>> but you know again I'm trying you know I

try to put myself in the country. No no

I mean it's it's it's truly mindbending.

I there's no way around it. Um but I

think that um you know for someone whose

whole political brand seems to be built

on the idea of his strength and that you

know we're we're returning to an era of

the Monroe Doctrine. Can

>> you just say quickly what the Monroe

doctrine is?

>> The Monroe Doctrine from the uh 1800s is

the idea that any foreign involvement in

the Western Hemisphere will prompt

American uh reprisals or action that

this is the United States is in charge

of the Western Hemisphere and that we'll

act accordingly. and that gave rise to a

series of American interventions in the

region and this view that the US is the

kind of police uh force for the western

hemisphere. Um and to your question like

that seems to fly in the face of this

MAGA idea of the importance of

isolationism

um an avoidance of international

conflicts etc. But I think some so much

of it also speaks to this issue of

presidential power and this idea of

unapologetic

uh you know muscle flexing and so on. I

mean, again, I'm casting about for

explanations for for a series of actions

that I don't think have logical or

substantive explanation. Um, but I'm

trying to imagine what the thinking is

in the White House where, uh, you know,

they're embarking on a project that is

extraordinarily complicated and there

have been a number of offramps. I mean,

I I I expected this kind of, you know,

the boat bombings, um the intercepting

uh oil ships. I expected that to

continue for several months more um

before there was direct military action

on the ground in Venezuela. I was

surprised by um the suddenness of this,

not necessarily by the outcome because

the administration has been explicit

about always wanting to do this sort of

thing. Um, but there I I sort of half

expected all along that there'd be some

way of drawing down this kind of

conflict and declaring victory and

moving on to the next thing. Um, but

that's clearly not how these guys think.

How much do you buy there being a

wag the dog dimension to this? So

Trump is down in the polls. The 2025

elections were across the board

horrendous for Republicans.

Anybody reading pundantry over the new

year was reading piece after piece about

the weakening, the shrinking of Donald

Trump, the, you know, the Trump era is

already beginning to end. You're already

seeing the fractures in MAGA. that

there's been an an overwhelming

narrative [snorts] that Trump is a lame

duck of some sort.

>> Mhm.

>> And that he has lost control of the

agenda. You know, there's affordability

and he doesn't have an affordability

plan. Do you given that this is

something they have actually signaled

they want to do?

>> Mhm. To what degree do you buy the the

argument I've seen people making that

among what is happening here is simply

Trump attempting to reassert control as

the forceful actor

of history. this is his affordability

agenda because in theory one day oil

will be cheaper, right? That that this

is his, you know, we are he's talk he's

now talking about Greenland again,

right? Maybe you can't pass much in

Congress, but maybe you can take

territory and, you know, show that the

world is under your thumb. Um, do you

buy that?

>> Um, you know, I I don't quite know,

frankly. I mean, I I think the I keep

going back to the idea of propaganda

through force, which is the ph the

phrase of a former Trump administration

official who put this in a kind of

political context that I thought was

helpful, which is, you know, there's

always got to be some um ongoing

conflict where the president gets to

demonstrate his power, his sense of

control, his authority. Um, and in that

sense, I I do think this is kind of

tailorade for him in this moment. A kind

of issue that he gets to bang the drum

on. Um, he gets to say that the

Venezuelan government is now taking

orders from us. He gets to say that this

guy who he's talked about ad nauseium

for being a horrible person, Maduro, is

finally out. You know, my understanding

of what the administration has done in

Venezuela is that it was not an

outgrowth, a kind of idol outgrowth of

this sense of like, well, we need to do

something to kind of revive our brand. I

think this is something that's been

brewing for a while. Um, and I think to

your earlier point, I think it was a

bunch of different things that finally

aligned at the right moment that allowed

for the situation to escalate as quickly

as it did. So, I I do think that this

was already set in motion, but I think

it's a very useful uh political prop for

the president. Of course, I hear myself

saying this and I'm gassed at the idea

that this kind of intervention is a

quote unquote prop. But I do think that

for the administration, it is useful in

that sense. I certainly think they view

it that way.

>> Then, as our final question, what are

three books you'd recommend to the

audience? three books. Uh my first would

be uh a novel called The Known World by

Edward P. Jones uh about Auntie Billum

Virginia. One of the most astonishing

novels I've ever read. Uh one of my

favorite American novels. I cannot

recommend it highly enough. Um my second

recommendation is a memoir by Carolyn

Forche called What You Have Heard Is

True. Um when she was 27, she was living

in El Salvador at the start of what

became the Salvadorian civil war. And

it's sort of a reflection on what that

period was like for her. It's incredibly

haunting and beautiful. um and very much

relevant to the current conversation. Uh

and my last recommendation would be The

Spy and the Trader by Ben McIntyre from

several years back uh about a Soviet uh

double agent uh who was uh you know

working for the KGB but became a double

agent for uh British intelligence during

the Cold War. Absolutely astonishing

true story that reads like fiction.

>> Jonathan Blitzer, thank you very much.

>> Thanks again [music] for having me.

>> [music]

>> Hey. [music]