Sources: With Rubio in Charge, Trump Lead Into Dead End in Venezuela

Jan. 5—A manic President Donald Trump yesterday brushed aside questions about whether the U.S. was headed into a quagmire in Venezuela following the military operation that captured its president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and brought them to New York to face drug trafficking charges. But sources close to the White House report that the military operation that swooped down into Caracas and snatched Maduro from his bedroom is the only competently planned part of an operation that Trump has proclaimed will run Venezuela until elections can be held, while turning over its highly valuable oil industry to American interests that will operate it to make profit for themselves and the Venezuelan people. The sources worry that Trump has placed the rest of his Venezuelan gambit in the hands of his incompetent Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is on a messianic crusade of regime change in the region to replace “communist” and “socialist” governments, and intends to use Venezuela as a springboard to get Trump behind this larger, and senseless, mission.

Rodríguez Rejects U.S. Plans, Triggering Confusion in Washington

But Rubio has not planned for what comes next, said these sources, and really has no idea what it will take “to run” Venezuela or who the U.S. can work with on the ground to restore stability, or as Trump proclaimed today, “law and order.”

Rubio, the sources report, had advised Trump that their key point person could be Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, and Trump said as much during a press briefing right after the raid. But Rodríguez delivered a fiery speech urging Venezuelans to resist regime change imposed by the United States, which angered Rubio, who had spoken with her a day earlier. Sources report that people familiar with Venezuelan politics told him not to react, that she had to make such statements right now. Rubio, ignoring this advice, proclaimed that the Maduro loyalist cannot serve as Venezuela’s interim leader and vowed that the U.S. would not support her administration. Instead, Rubio pushed for free elections to be held to determine the next leader of the country, as the U.S. and other nations never recognized Maduro’s 2024 win.

This led Trump to flip the script on Rodríguez, threatening her with “a fate worse than Maduro” if she refuses to play ball. Then contradicting Rubio, Trump said that the country was a long way from holding elections, and that the first priority was not early elections but restoring law and order, having been told by people working with Rubio that the country was plunging into chaos and anarchy: “We should run the country with law and order. We should run the country where we can take advantage of the economics of what they have — which is valuable oil and valuable other things.”

This morning Rodriguez said in a shocking change of tone that her country was ready to work with the US — after she earlier criticized the raid as an illegal grab for the country’s national resources. “We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence,” Rodriguez stated.

Sources Warn of a “Clown Show” and Looming Quagmire

“This is becoming a real clown show,” said a source, adding, “as everything that Rubio is involved with eventually does. Trump is always looking for allies and makes deals to get them. Rubio is incapable of being Trump’s emissary because he eventually judges people from their ideological framework and whether they have his warped view of the world. How do you govern a country if you don’t have the people to work with on the ground? Are you going to send in Delta Force to run things? That takes time to prepare. You have to have thought this all out before you launch such an operation. Trump says there is no chance of this being a quagmire. Well, without proper intelligence and planning you are already well into one—which is why saner people than Rubio had told Trump to seek a negotiated exit for Maduro.”

This and other sources commented on the stupidity of having the President of the United States say that he wanted American oil interests to take over running that industry. This, said one source, makes the whole thing look like a “snatch and steal” operation: “You go in and remove the country’s leadership so that you have the oil industry, who most Americans regard as thieves, steal the country’s resources. Why would you make that point now? And more importantly, how is this going to happen—send the Marines to take over the oil industry? The reason that Rodríguez was being initially pushed was because she was the oil minister and could facilitate an American takeover, which may yet happen. The reason that Rubio doesn't trust her is because she is a 'socialist' and she likes the Cubans."

No Clear Plan, No Local Partners, and No Exit Strategy

“Rubio wants to talk about elections, but as Trump saw at his press conference, this only brings up questions about who the U.S. will back,” said the source. “But who wants to run as ‘America’s puppet’? You have Trump saying that one of the opposition leaders, [Nobel Laureate Maria] Machado, can only win with his backing.”

“This is all crazy,” said the source. “It would have been better to say nothing about what the U.S. intends to do next, until it has some kind of plan worked out. You needed someone like [Special Envoy Steve] Witkoff to tell Trump to calm the fuck down and let’s work things out. Better, you should have gone about this differently, without the gunboats and Delta Force, without the ‘peace President’ invading a sovereign nation. Send in an envoy and negotiate an exit deal with Maduro, who clearly wanted such a deal without the spotlight and ultimatums. [Special Envoy Ric] Grenell told people that he could have done this. He should have at least been allowed to give it a try. Now, you are going to have to negotiate a whole plan with people on the ground, and you will need more than handwaving. You don’t want American military to do this by themselves. And you cannot rely on Rubio, who is already planning to invade Cuba and overthrow the ‘commies’ who threw his family out as part of the exploitative class and branded them gusanos [bird shit]. It was easy to get in there with Delta Force; it will be harder to get out.”

“I would hate to be in Rubio’s shoes when Trump figures out, as they say, that he is up shit’s creek without a paddle,” the source concluded.