WASHINGTON — In a private meeting in the Oval Office last week, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham laid out a blueprint for what should happen next in Venezuela.
“You’re in charge,” Graham, the Red Cross committee member, recalled telling President Donald Trump. “We will rebuild the place, but eventually we will move to elections.”
“I think that’s where we’re going to go,” Graham later told NBC News in an interview.
If and when they get there That remains to be seen.
Trump has left no doubt that when it comes to Venezuela, he is in command. But he says the remnants of Nicolas Maduro’s repressive regime are now cooperating with him, and he appears to be in no hurry to hold elections that would allow Venezuelans to choose their new leaders.
“We get along very well with the people of Venezuela — both the people and the people who run Venezuela,” he said at a news conference Friday at the White House, surrounded by oil executives who had come to discuss drilling opportunities in the country.
Asked by NBC News on Friday whether he preferred stability or democracy in Venezuela, Trump said: “For me, it’s almost the same. We want stability, but we want democracy. Ultimately, it’s going to be democracy.”
Within the Trump administration, different officials are saying different things at different times about Venezuela’s future, reflecting the competing priorities under discussion. One camp stresses the need for a stable Venezuela that acquiesces to Trump’s vision of renewing American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. There is another option that is consistent with establishing a democracy that reflects the broader will of the people of Venezuela.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who sat next to Trump at the meeting on Friday, made clear in his remarks that the goal was for Venezuela to develop in ways consistent with American interests, but also “for the people.”
Stephen Miller, a senior White House aide who helps shape policy in Venezuela, struck a more nationalistic chord in a recent interview. he He told CNN And it is not “the mission of the United States… to go around the world and demand immediate elections everywhere, immediately, all the time, immediately.”
He added: “The United States is using its army to secure our interests without apology in our hemisphere. We are a superpower. Under President Trump, we will act like a superpower.”
In the days after ordering the military raid that led to Maduro’s arrest, Trump has said little about restoring Venezuela’s democratic traditions.
On January 3, he said the United States would assume responsibility for Venezuela “until such time as an appropriate transition can take place.”
Speaking to NBC News two days later, on January 5, Trump said “there can be no election” until “the country is fixed.” There was no further clarity in a January 7 interview with New York TimesWhich stated that Trump did not set a date for holding elections in Venezuela and that America’s control over the country may continue for years.
Trump’s main focus is the untapped potential inherent in Venezuela’s dormant oil fields. After hearing closed-door briefings from members of Trump’s Cabinet in the wake of the raid, some lawmakers came out saying the administration did not seem to imagine what comes next for Venezuela.
“It’s unclear to me who’s really driving this train,” Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, who attended one of the administration’s briefings last week, said in an interview. “Is it Rubio? Is it Stephen Miller? I don’t see a unified message about the future of Venezuela coming from different members of the administration.”
She said Trump “was very clear what this is about. This is about oil.”
“My impression is that they intend to use some version of strong-arm tactics to essentially gain access to the country’s natural resources and oil,” Rep. Raja Krishnamurthy, D-Ill., who also attended a news conference last week on Venezuela, said in an interview. (Krishnamurthy patronizes invoice This would prevent taxpayer money from being used to run Venezuela or support companies that enter to extract oil in the country.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Rubio denied that post-Maduro planning was a hasty matter. He pointed to the progress that has already been made, pointing to the agreement reached with Venezuela’s state-owned energy company on oil that was subject to sanctions.
“Actually, it’s not just a warning, it’s not just saying or speculating that it’s going to happen — it’s actually happening,” Rubio said.
A coterie of Trump administration officials is now directing events in Venezuela.
Who is actually running the country now? “I am,” Trump said in his interview with NBC News.
Vice President J.D. Vance chairs a regular meeting of key officials to discuss “next steps” and ensure that Venezuela’s government is “actually listening to the United States and doing what the United States needs to do in the interests of our country,” he said at a recent White House news conference.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright oversees oil development and speaks regularly to industry executives and to his counterparts in Venezuela, a department spokesman said.
General Dan Kean, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, plays a leadership role in military affairs; The huge naval fleet deployed in the Caribbean gives Trump great influence in his dealings with the current leadership in Venezuela.
The main person is Rubio. A person familiar with the thinking of Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said he had spoken repeatedly with Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, since the US military operation last weekend. They talk to each other in Spanish.
When Trump says he is running Venezuela, he means his team is directing Rodriguez, making sure its government delivers needed services on time, said a former U.S. government official familiar with the situation.
Graham said that Trump, for now, is emphasizing the idea that the United States is responsible for Venezuela to remain stable. But he added that Rubio and others want the election to eventually happen and realize there is “no other way.”
Rubio is already working toward an endgame, where Venezuela holds democratic elections, the person familiar with his thinking said. But the Trump administration’s priority at this stage is to stabilize the country after the overthrow of Maduro.
This means keeping the remnants of the Maduro regime safe to run the country day after day. An immediate purge of Maduro’s government could lead to chaos, with displaced officials pushed into drug cartels or other criminal enterprises to make a living, said the person familiar with Rubio’s thinking. He added that this was one of the bitter lessons we learned from the American invasion of Iraq during the George W. Bush administration more than 20 years ago.
However, veteran diplomats have questioned the wisdom of leaving Rodriguez in office, rather than promoting a member of the opposition, perhaps Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Trump indicated in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that Machado would arrive in Washington in the coming days and that he would meet with her.
Asked why Machado visited, the person close to Rubio said: “Everyone recognizes what Machado has done for the country and the level of support she has had. Her ability to keep the opposition movement alive has been very impressive.”
“The expectation is that as we move forward in this process, it will be necessary for there to be national reconciliation [in Venezuela] This must include the opposition.”
Elliott Abrams, who was Trump’s special representative for Venezuela during the first term, expressed doubts about the decision to keep Rodriguez in a leadership position. Abrams said in an interview that there was no incentive for her to steer the country toward democracy, given that the election could lead to her ouster and possible imprisonment.
“We are undermining democratic forces” in Venezuela, Abrams said.
He added: “I don’t like the way this is done at all, that is, leaving the system in place and relying on Delcy Rodriguez in charge of the country and believing that she will bring about change.”
“Trump made a real mistake by throwing the opposition under the bus and saying we’re going to rule through the Maduro regime, not to mention Maduro,” said John Bolton, who was White House national security adviser during Trump’s first term.