--- title: "How Does Trump Plan to Run Venezuela? Inside the Post-Maduro Power Map" description: "On Saturday, January 3, 2026, American special forces swooped into Caracas, captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and evacuated him to the USS Iwo Jima, one of the US warships that had been prowling the waters off Venezuela's coast. An image of Maduro aboard the ship soon emerged, followed by a White House video of the former president being perp-walked through the offices of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in New York, where he is set to stand trial on a host of charges including narcoterrorism.\n\nMost people already know this part of the story. It is among the biggest news events of 2026 so far, the kind of weekend that pulls newsrooms into the office. What far fewer people can explain is what comes next: who fills the leadership vacuum left in the wake of Maduro's removal, and how a foreign capital expects to manage a country it has just decapitated from the top.\n\nThe answer began to take shape at a presidential press conference held soon after the capture, when President Trump announced that the United States would \"run\" Venezuela until a safe, proper, and judicious transition could be ensured. That phrasing raised an obvious question. The president of the United States is not going to relocate to Caracas to handle the day-to-day governing of an oil-rich nation of roughly 28 million people while Washington itself demands his attention.\n\nThe real story is not a single American administrator parachuting into Miraflores Palace. It is a quiet bargain struck with the very people Maduro left behind, an arrangement built less on trust than on leverage, oil, and the fear of a war nobody in Washington wants to fight.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- After US forces captured Maduro and brought him to New York for trial, Venezuela's Supreme Court installed his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as acting president to preserve administrative continuity.\n- Reporting indicates Washington had quietly settled on Rodriguez weeks before the operation, persuaded by her record managing the oil industry and assurances she would protect future American energy investments.\n- Rodriguez is a veteran Chavista and former foreign minister whose brother, Jorge Rodriguez, leads the National Assembly, giving the siblings control of the regime's civil and technical machinery.\n- Trump publicly sidelined the recognized opposition, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado, who are both outside the country and command none of the institutions that matter on the ground.\n- Washington kept oil sanctions in place as leverage and reserved the right to use force again, with Trump warning Rodriguez she could \"pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.\"\n- Chavismo remains deeply entrenched after a quarter-century in power, and a heavy-handed imposition risks turning the movement into an armed insurgency rather than a defeated faction.\n- Elections are promised but not soon, leaving Venezuela's near future suspended between the wishes of its own people and the priorities of officials in Washington.\n\n## How Washington Plans to Govern From a Distance\n\nRunning a country you have just invaded is harder than capturing its leader. The arithmetic of the situation made that clear almost immediately. Reporting suggested the White House was weighing a more elevated role for Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, in overseeing post-Maduro operations. Yet that idea collided with reality on two fronts: it was never confirmed, and Miller already carries one of the most demanding portfolios in Washington, one that cannot accommodate daily oversight of a foreign government an ocean away.\n\nThat constraint is the hinge of the entire arrangement. The United States wanted the outcome of regime change, a compliant Venezuela friendly to American energy interests, without the cost of an occupation. The solution was not to govern Venezuela directly but to find a Venezuelan willing to govern it on Washington's terms. The candidate who emerged was not an exiled dissident or a democratic hero. It was the woman Maduro himself had appointed as his deputy.\n\n## The Vice President Who Became President\n\nAfter the events of that Saturday, the Constitutional Chamber of Venezuela's Supreme Court ordered Vice President Delcy Rodriguez to assume the role of acting president, framing the move as a way to guarantee administrative continuity and the nation's security. On paper, it looked like a constitutional reflex. In practice, it was the start of a carefully managed handoff.\n\nRodriguez's first speech set the tone for the strange double game that followed. Sworn in, she cast herself as a defiant figure, calling Maduro's capture an atrocity that violated international law and insisting that he remained the country's true president. To many regional observers, that defiance was largely theater, a performance aimed at appeasing humiliated government loyalists, especially in an army stunned by how quickly American forces had seized Maduro. The point was to keep the base from fracturing.\n\nWhile her left hand soothed the Maduro loyalists, her right was busy consolidating power. That included quiet overtures to Washington signaling that she would cooperate. At his press conference, Trump confirmed that Rodriguez had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and was, in effect, willing to do whatever it took to \"make Venezuela great again.\"\n\n## Playing Ball: The Signal to Washington\n\nThe clearest tell came not from a leaked cable but from social media. Rodriguez posted a statement on Instagram that read, in part: \"We extend an invitation to the U.S. government to work together on a cooperative agenda, oriented toward shared development, within the framework of international law, and to strengthen lasting community coexistence.\" Stripped of diplomatic varnish, it was a public admission that she was willing to play ball.\n\nThat she did so within days of denouncing Maduro's removal as an international crime captures the contradiction at the heart of her position. Rodriguez has to hold together a movement that views the United States as an aggressor while simultaneously negotiating her own survival with that same power. The Instagram post was aimed at two audiences at once: loyalists who needed reassurance, and officials in Washington who needed proof she could be a reliable partner. It is a balancing act that will define her presidency, and it raises two unavoidable questions. Who exactly is she? And why would Washington trust a figure so closely tied to the man it just put on a plane to New York?\n\n## Who Is Delcy Rodriguez?\n\nRodriguez did not arrive at the presidency by accident. Born in 1969, she is the daughter of Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, a Marxist leader who gained international notoriety for the 1976 kidnapping of William Niehous, an American businessman in Caracas. After studying law in Venezuela and France, she followed her father's left-wing path, joining the government of Hugo Chavez in 2003.\n\nHer rise tracked the consolidation of Chavismo itself. After Maduro succeeded Chavez following his death in 2013, he appointed Rodriguez minister of foreign affairs, a post Maduro had held before becoming Chavez's vice president and successor, and one long seen as a proving ground for higher office. She was named vice president in 2018 and, in 2020, minister for economy and finance. In that role she oversaw the country's oil industry at a moment when it was reeling under American sanctions. Then 2026 arrived, and the woman who had managed the regime's economy became the head of its state.\n\nAnalysts and international media have described Rodriguez as a cosmopolitan technocrat with links to both the Venezuelan economic elite and foreign investors. Those connections, the kind that come from years spent negotiating with creditors and oil partners, are precisely what she will need as she tries to stabilize a devastated economy in a post-Maduro world.\n\n## A Family at the Center of the Regime\n\nRodriguez is not the only member of her family woven into the machinery of Venezuelan power. Her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, is president of the Venezuelan National Assembly and served as Maduro's chief political strategist. He was the one who swore Maduro into office after the disputed 2024 elections, a detail that underscores how central the siblings have been to the regime's continuity.\n\nAccording to the Spanish-language outlet Infobae, the Rodriguez siblings currently control the civil and technical wing of the regime. That matters enormously for understanding why Washington chose continuity over rupture. Delcy Rodriguez is not a lone technocrat to be propped up; she is embedded in a family network that already runs significant parts of the state. Backing her was not just backing a person. It was backing an existing apparatus capable of keeping the lights on, the ministries staffed, and the oil flowing while the dust settled.\n\n## Why Washington Chose Maduro's Own Deputy\n\nThe most counterintuitive part of this story is the decision to leave Maduro-aligned figures in power at all. Why would an administration that mounted a military operation to remove Maduro then hand the country to the people he appointed?\n\nAccording to the New York Times, Washington had settled on Rodriguez weeks before the operation to oust Maduro. Officials told the paper that the administration had been impressed by her management of the oil industry, and that intermediaries had convinced Washington she would protect and champion future American energy investments. In other words, the appeal was not ideological alignment. It was a calculated bet that the woman who had kept Venezuelan oil moving under sanctions could be trusted to keep it moving for American companies.\n\nBeyond the financial logic, there was a strategic one: keeping Rodriguez in place would prevent a protracted, destabilizing fight to fill the vacuum Maduro left behind. A messy succession struggle could have undone the very stability the operation was meant to produce.\n\n## The Trap of Toppling an Entrenched Movement\n\nFor all her technocratic polish, Delcy Rodriguez is first and foremost a Chavista, a member of the movement Hugo Chavez founded that has ruled Venezuela since 1999. Over a quarter-century, Chavismo has become deeply entrenched at every level of government, national and state alike. And it does not live only in the government. Despite widely shared videos of Venezuelans celebrating Maduro's capture, the movement still commands significant support; the Associated Press reported that armed militia members quickly took to the streets to demand his release.\n\nWhen a movement is that embedded, uprooting it entirely becomes a far costlier project than a surgical, three-and-a-half-hour military operation. It would require the kind of nation-building Washington undertook in the Middle East, an effort that proved deeply unpopular at home. The lesson of those wars hangs over every decision here: removing a regime is the easy part; replacing the entire society it built is what breaks armies and presidencies.\n\n## The Insurgency Risk\n\nThere is a sharper danger than mere cost, and analysts have named it directly. As Robert Muggah, a researcher and international security expert, argued in The Conversation, installing someone too closely aligned with American interests risked not only tainting the new leader's legitimacy but also deepening Venezuela's polarization. In his view, it would reinforce the narrative of imperial imposition that Chavismo has long peddled and set the stage for the Chavista movement to mutate into an insurgency.\n\nThis is the scenario Washington appears most eager to avoid. A defeated faction that accepts its loss is manageable. A wounded, well-armed movement convinced it is fighting a foreign occupier is a long, bloody problem with no clean exit. By keeping a Chavista at the helm, Washington blunts the imperial-imposition narrative and denies the movement the rallying cry it would need to take up arms. The choice of Rodriguez, then, is partly an insurance policy against the very insurgency a more aggressive approach might ignite.\n\n## Leverage, Not Trust: The Terms of the Deal\n\nNone of this means Washington trusts Rodriguez. US officials were blunt with the New York Times: their relationship with her government would depend entirely on her ability to play by their rules. To keep her honest, Washington signaled it would maintain the existing restrictions on Venezuela's oil industry, using sanctions relief as a reward it could grant or withhold. The leverage is deliberate. An economy still choked by sanctions gives the new president every incentive to cooperate.\n\nThe threat behind that leverage is military. Officials insisted they reserved the right to take further action if Rodriguez failed to respect American interests, a warning Trump amplified in an interview with the Atlantic. \"If she doesn't do what's right,\" he said, \"she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.\" The message could hardly be clearer. Rodriguez governs at Washington's sufferance, and the same forces that removed her predecessor remain within reach. So if she were ever to face a Maduro-style exit, who would replace her?\n\n## The Opposition That Washington Passed Over\n\nFor most observers of Venezuela, the natural successors were obvious. After Maduro's ouster, it seemed a near-foregone conclusion that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the opposition figure widely believed to have defeated Maduro in the disputed 2024 elections, would take over. The expectation was so strong that French President Emmanuel Macron issued a statement saying Gonzalez should oversee the transition. After the capture, Gonzalez himself urged the military to help him assume control of the country.\n\nIf not Gonzalez, then surely Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado, and with good reason. Although Gonzalez had won the 2024 vote, Machado carried the larger political profile. She had been the driving force behind the opposition's resurgence and won its primary in 2023 before Maduro's government barred her from running. She also held genuine international legitimacy, having received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 for championing democracy in Venezuela. And she had cultivated a relationship with Trump, even dedicating her Nobel Prize to him in a gesture many read as positioning for exactly this moment.\n\n## A Stunning Rebuke\n\nThen Trump dismissed her, almost immediately. At his press conference, he allowed that Machado was a \"very nice woman\" but said she lacked \"the support within or the respect within the country\" to lead. It was a stunning rebuke that caught many observers off guard. Venezuelan opposition figures told the Washington Post that the statement was painful for many in the movement, a bitter pill after years of struggle.\n\nThe snub was not arbitrary. Two reasons explain why Trump sidelined the very people who had spent years fighting Maduro, and both reveal how starkly Washington weighed power over principle.\n\n## Why the Opposition Holds No Cards\n\nThe first reason is brutal in its simplicity: neither Gonzalez nor Machado has any real power on the ground. Gonzalez has been in exile in Spain since September 2024, and Machado, who spent eleven months in hiding before slipping out of the country to accept her Nobel Prize, is also abroad. When they called on the Venezuelan diaspora to rally in the streets, they could not, as the Washington Post noted, mobilize a meaningful response inside Venezuela itself.\n\nMore fundamentally, neither controls the institutions that actually matter. They do not command the military, as Gonzalez discovered. They do not run the intelligence services. They do not control the state oil company. And despite their electoral success and international recognition, there is a real fear their domestic support is greatly exaggerated. Given the deep loyalty to Maduro that persists across parts of the military and intelligence apparatus, it is entirely plausible that their lives would be in constant danger.\n\nThe doubt runs deeper still. As Charles Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Venezuela, told CNN, it is hard to know whether even the people who voted for the opposition in 2024 were true believers or simply voters fed up with a collapsed economy. He estimated that at least 20 percent of the population, possibly more, still backed Maduro's government, a constituency that could become a serious problem if it turned toward armed insurgency.\n\n## The Nobel Prize Trump Coveted\n\nThe second reason is more personal. According to sources who spoke to the Post, Trump chose not to elevate Machado specifically because she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor he has long coveted. Although she ultimately dedicated the award to him, the president allegedly regarded her acceptance of it as the ultimate sin. One source put it starkly: \"If she had turned it down and said, 'I can't accept it because it's Donald Trump's,' she'd be the president of Venezuela today.\"\n\nYet the opposition's weakness is also, paradoxically, its value to Washington. Should a moment arrive when Rodriguez must be removed, Gonzalez and Machado become the desirable alternatives precisely because they lack entrenched institutional power. With no independent base, they would be completely dependent on American support to govern and would have little choice but to align with Washington's agenda. The catch is that installing either would require a sustained American military presence to prop them up, a commitment Washington appears reluctant to make. Their dependency is an asset only if the United States is prepared to pay for it.\n\n## The Men With Guns\n\nIf Washington wanted to keep a Chavista in power but distrusted Rodriguez, regional observers identified two other figures who could plausibly hold the country together: Diosdado Cabello, the current Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace, and Vladimir Padrino Lopez, a four-star general serving as Minister for Defense.\n\nTheir power is concrete in a way the opposition's is not. Lopez is a popular figure within the Venezuelan army, while Cabello controls the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN), the national police, and the prison system, making them two of the most powerful men in the country. As Brian Naranjo, a former senior US diplomat who served in Venezuela, told the Wall Street Journal: \"Those are the two guys who control Venezuela right now. These are the guys who command people with guns.\"\n\nFor Washington, they represent possible fallback options, but the question is whether they would cooperate. Lopez has been outspoken in criticizing American actions, while Cabello has stayed quieter, and both have been sanctioned by the United States, which previously offered $25 million for information leading to Cabello's arrest and $15 million for Padrino. For now, according to the Journal, both appear to be playing ball and have thrown their support behind Rodriguez. Whether that holds once the heaviest pressure from Washington eases is anyone's guess.\n\n## Why Not Just Hold Elections?\n\nGiven all of this, the obvious question is why Venezuela does not simply hold elections. A genuine vote would let Venezuelans choose a government that reflects their wishes, a welcome change after the contested 2024 contest, and it would grant any new government legitimacy in the eyes of both its own people and the international community. The Venezuelan constitution even points that way, requiring the interim government to hold elections within 30 days if the president becomes incapable of holding office.\n\nTrump, however, poured cold water on the idea of a near-term vote, saying elections would be held \"at the right time.\" Rubio echoed that caution. In an interview with ABC, the secretary of state acknowledged that elections were needed because neither the Maduro government nor, by extension, the Rodriguez government, held electoral legitimacy, but called it absurd to demand a vote so soon. An election will eventually come, and the figures named here are likely to be involved in one way or another. The timing, though, will be set as much in Washington as in Caracas.\n\n## A Future Suspended Between Two Capitals\n\nWhoever Venezuelans ultimately choose will inherit a punishing task. On one side stand the Venezuelan people, who need a leader capable of repairing a deeply broken economy, not only for the American companies poised to invest in the oil sector, but for ordinary citizens who have endured years of hyperinflation, food shortages, and collapsing public services. On the other side stands Washington, which will demand compliance with American interests, particularly favorable terms for oil development and assurances that Venezuela does not become a haven for Chinese or Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere.\n\nThose demands carry a real price. Meeting them would mean cutting or at least curbing ties with China, a country that has poured billions into Venezuela's economy over the past two decades. The economic shock of that realignment would be significant and, for many Venezuelans, unwelcome.\n\nWhat happens next, then, will not be decided in Caracas alone. Venezuela's future rests in the hands of its own people and in the hands of officials in Washington, and the needs of those two groups may not align. Whether the country emerges as a genuinely democratic state or simply becomes another place where American economic interests outweigh local aspirations will depend on how this delicate balance is managed in the months ahead. The precedent being set marks a new chapter in the complicated relationship between the United States and Latin America, one whose ripple effects will be felt across the region for years to come.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n**What happened to Nicolas Maduro?**\nOn January 3, 2026, American special forces captured Maduro in Caracas and evacuated him aboard the USS Iwo Jima, a warship that had been operating off Venezuela's coast. He was taken to New York, where the White House released video of him being walked through DEA offices. He is set to stand trial on charges including narcoterrorism.\n\n**Who is running Venezuela now?**\nVenezuela's Supreme Court installed Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as acting president to preserve administrative continuity. Trump said the United States would \"run\" Venezuela until a proper transition could be ensured, but in practice that means working through Rodriguez and her allies rather than governing directly.\n\n**Why did Washington back Rodriguez instead of the opposition?**\nReporting indicates Washington settled on Rodriguez weeks before the operation, impressed by her management of the oil industry and assured she would protect American energy investments. Keeping a Chavista in power was also seen as a way to avoid a destabilizing power struggle and reduce the risk of the movement turning into an armed insurgency.\n\n**Why were Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Corina Machado passed over?**\nBoth are outside Venezuela, Gonzalez in exile in Spain and Machado abroad after months in hiding, and neither controls the military, intelligence services, or state oil company. Trump also reportedly resented Machado's acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, an award he has long coveted, despite her dedicating it to him.\n\n**What leverage does the United States hold over Rodriguez?**\nWashington kept existing oil sanctions in place to use as leverage and signaled it could ease them in exchange for cooperation. Officials also reserved the right to use military force again, with Trump warning that Rodriguez could \"pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro\" if she failed to respect American interests.\n\n**Who are Diosdado Cabello and Vladimir Padrino Lopez?**\nCabello is the Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace and controls the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN), the national police, and the prison system. Padrino Lopez is a four-star general and Minister for Defense, popular within the army. Both have been sanctioned by the United States but currently back Rodriguez, and both are seen as potential alternatives who command real force.\n\n**Will there be elections in Venezuela?**\nThe Venezuelan constitution requires elections within 30 days when a president cannot hold office, but Trump said a vote would come \"at the right time,\" and Rubio called demands for an immediate election absurd. An election is expected eventually, with many of the figures named here likely to play a role, though its timing remains uncertain.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [New York Times: Trump, Venezuela, Rodriguez, Machado](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/04/world/americas/trump-venezuela-leader-rodriguez-machado.html)\n- [India Today: Trump Venezuela plan, US strike on Caracas](https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/trump-venezuela-plan-us-strike-carcas-nicolas-maduro-maria-machado-nobel-delcy-rodriguez-2846787-2026-01-05)\n- [Washington Post: US-Venezuela plan, Trump, Rubio, Miller](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/04/us-venezuela-plan-trump-rubio-miller/)\n- [CNBC: Trump on Venezuela](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/03/trump-venezuela.html)\n- [India Today: What Trump said on Nobel laureate Maria Machado](https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/what-trump-said-on-nobel-laureate-maria-machado-as-potential-venezuelan-leader-2846180-2026-01-04)\n- [ABC News: Trump on Venezuelan opposition leader's ability to govern](https://abcnews.go.com/International/trump-venezuelan-opposition-leader-respect-govern-after-maduro/story?id=128868550)\n- [Wall Street Journal: Venezuela's men with guns remain the ultimate power](https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuelas-men-with-guns-remain-the-ultimate-power-after-maduros-ouster-ef16681a)\n- [BBC News](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgx0ylzy8vo)\n- [NBC News: Venezuela, Trump, Maduro](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/venezuela-trump-maduro-rcna252177)\n- [El Pais: With Maduro in US custody, who governs in Venezuela](https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-01-03/with-maduro-in-us-custody-who-governs-in-venezuela.html)\n- [New York Post: Marco Rubio says Venezuelan VP Delcy Rodriguez isn't a legitimate leader](https://nypost.com/2026/01/04/us-news/marco-rubio-says-venezuelan-vp-delcy-rodriguez-isnt-a-legitimate-leader/)\n- [El Pais: Has the democratic transition begun in Venezuela](https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-01-03/has-the-democratic-transition-begun-in-venezuela.html)\n- [Infobae: Como queda la cupula del regimen chavista tras la captura de Nicolas Maduro](https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2026/01/03/como-queda-la-cupula-del-regimen-chavista-tras-la-captura-de-nicolas-maduro/)\n\n" url: https://homefronts.pub/article/how-does-trump-plan-to-run-venezuela.md canonical: https://homefronts.pub/article/how-does-trump-plan-to-run-venezuela datePublished: 2026-06-03 dateModified: 2026-06-03 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://homefronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: HomeFronts image: "https://media.homefronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/XE_XQ4riqUg/hero.jpg" type: Article contentHash: 02cd218ab4ee9d24857dc91fe1bea833e628cbf3507457689972ce14f602400e tokens: 6699 summaryUrl: https://homefronts.pub/article/how-does-trump-plan-to-run-venezuela.md.summary.md --- On Saturday, January 3, 2026, American special forces swooped into Caracas, captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and evacuated him to the USS Iwo Jima, one of the US warships that had been prowling the waters off Venezuela's coast. An image of Maduro aboard the ship soon emerged, followed by a White House video of the former president being perp-walked through the offices of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in New York, where he is set to stand trial on a host of charges including narcoterrorism. Most people already know this part of the story. It is among the biggest news events of 2026 so far, the kind of weekend that pulls newsrooms into the office. What far fewer people can explain is what comes next: who fills the leadership vacuum left in the wake of Maduro's removal, and how a foreign capital expects to manage a country it has just decapitated from the top. The answer began to take shape at a presidential press conference held soon after the capture, when President Trump announced that the United States would "run" Venezuela until a safe, proper, and judicious transition could be ensured. That phrasing raised an obvious question. The president of the United States is not going to relocate to Caracas to handle the day-to-day governing of an oil-rich nation of roughly 28 million people while Washington itself demands his attention. The real story is not a single American administrator parachuting into Miraflores Palace. It is a quiet bargain struck with the very people Maduro left behind, an arrangement built less on trust than on leverage, oil, and the fear of a war nobody in Washington wants to fight. ## Key Takeaways - After US forces captured Maduro and brought him to New York for trial, Venezuela's Supreme Court installed his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as acting president to preserve administrative continuity. - Reporting indicates Washington had quietly settled on Rodriguez weeks before the operation, persuaded by her record managing the oil industry and assurances she would protect future American energy investments. - Rodriguez is a veteran Chavista and former foreign minister whose brother, Jorge Rodriguez, leads the National Assembly, giving the siblings control of the regime's civil and technical machinery. - Trump publicly sidelined the recognized opposition, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado, who are both outside the country and command none of the institutions that matter on the ground. - Washington kept oil sanctions in place as leverage and reserved the right to use force again, with Trump warning Rodriguez she could "pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro." - Chavismo remains deeply entrenched after a quarter-century in power, and a heavy-handed imposition risks turning the movement into an armed insurgency rather than a defeated faction. - Elections are promised but not soon, leaving Venezuela's near future suspended between the wishes of its own people and the priorities of officials in Washington. ## How Washington Plans to Govern From a Distance Running a country you have just invaded is harder than capturing its leader. The arithmetic of the situation made that clear almost immediately. Reporting suggested the White House was weighing a more elevated role for Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser, in overseeing post-Maduro operations. Yet that idea collided with reality on two fronts: it was never confirmed, and Miller already carries one of the most demanding portfolios in Washington, one that cannot accommodate daily oversight of a foreign government an ocean away. That constraint is the hinge of the entire arrangement. The United States wanted the outcome of regime change, a compliant Venezuela friendly to American energy interests, without the cost of an occupation. The solution was not to govern Venezuela directly but to find a Venezuelan willing to govern it on Washington's terms. The candidate who emerged was not an exiled dissident or a democratic hero. It was the woman Maduro himself had appointed as his deputy. ## The Vice President Who Became President After the events of that Saturday, the Constitutional Chamber of Venezuela's Supreme Court ordered Vice President Delcy Rodriguez to assume the role of acting president, framing the move as a way to guarantee administrative continuity and the nation's security. On paper, it looked like a constitutional reflex. In practice, it was the start of a carefully managed handoff. Rodriguez's first speech set the tone for the strange double game that followed. Sworn in, she cast herself as a defiant figure, calling Maduro's capture an atrocity that violated international law and insisting that he remained the country's true president. To many regional observers, that defiance was largely theater, a performance aimed at appeasing humiliated government loyalists, especially in an army stunned by how quickly American forces had seized Maduro. The point was to keep the base from fracturing. While her left hand soothed the Maduro loyalists, her right was busy consolidating power. That included quiet overtures to Washington signaling that she would cooperate. At his press conference, Trump confirmed that Rodriguez had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and was, in effect, willing to do whatever it took to "make Venezuela great again." ## Playing Ball: The Signal to Washington The clearest tell came not from a leaked cable but from social media. Rodriguez posted a statement on Instagram that read, in part: "We extend an invitation to the U.S. government to work together on a cooperative agenda, oriented toward shared development, within the framework of international law, and to strengthen lasting community coexistence." Stripped of diplomatic varnish, it was a public admission that she was willing to play ball. That she did so within days of denouncing Maduro's removal as an international crime captures the contradiction at the heart of her position. Rodriguez has to hold together a movement that views the United States as an aggressor while simultaneously negotiating her own survival with that same power. The Instagram post was aimed at two audiences at once: loyalists who needed reassurance, and officials in Washington who needed proof she could be a reliable partner. It is a balancing act that will define her presidency, and it raises two unavoidable questions. Who exactly is she? And why would Washington trust a figure so closely tied to the man it just put on a plane to New York? ## Who Is Delcy Rodriguez? Rodriguez did not arrive at the presidency by accident. Born in 1969, she is the daughter of Jorge Antonio Rodriguez, a Marxist leader who gained international notoriety for the 1976 kidnapping of William Niehous, an American businessman in Caracas. After studying law in Venezuela and France, she followed her father's left-wing path, joining the government of Hugo Chavez in 2003. Her rise tracked the consolidation of Chavismo itself. After Maduro succeeded Chavez following his death in 2013, he appointed Rodriguez minister of foreign affairs, a post Maduro had held before becoming Chavez's vice president and successor, and one long seen as a proving ground for higher office. She was named vice president in 2018 and, in 2020, minister for economy and finance. In that role she oversaw the country's oil industry at a moment when it was reeling under American sanctions. Then 2026 arrived, and the woman who had managed the regime's economy became the head of its state. Analysts and international media have described Rodriguez as a cosmopolitan technocrat with links to both the Venezuelan economic elite and foreign investors. Those connections, the kind that come from years spent negotiating with creditors and oil partners, are precisely what she will need as she tries to stabilize a devastated economy in a post-Maduro world. ## A Family at the Center of the Regime Rodriguez is not the only member of her family woven into the machinery of Venezuelan power. Her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, is president of the Venezuelan National Assembly and served as Maduro's chief political strategist. He was the one who swore Maduro into office after the disputed 2024 elections, a detail that underscores how central the siblings have been to the regime's continuity. According to the Spanish-language outlet Infobae, the Rodriguez siblings currently control the civil and technical wing of the regime. That matters enormously for understanding why Washington chose continuity over rupture. Delcy Rodriguez is not a lone technocrat to be propped up; she is embedded in a family network that already runs significant parts of the state. Backing her was not just backing a person. It was backing an existing apparatus capable of keeping the lights on, the ministries staffed, and the oil flowing while the dust settled. ## Why Washington Chose Maduro's Own Deputy The most counterintuitive part of this story is the decision to leave Maduro-aligned figures in power at all. Why would an administration that mounted a military operation to remove Maduro then hand the country to the people he appointed? According to the New York Times, Washington had settled on Rodriguez weeks before the operation to oust Maduro. Officials told the paper that the administration had been impressed by her management of the oil industry, and that intermediaries had convinced Washington she would protect and champion future American energy investments. In other words, the appeal was not ideological alignment. It was a calculated bet that the woman who had kept Venezuelan oil moving under sanctions could be trusted to keep it moving for American companies. Beyond the financial logic, there was a strategic one: keeping Rodriguez in place would prevent a protracted, destabilizing fight to fill the vacuum Maduro left behind. A messy succession struggle could have undone the very stability the operation was meant to produce. ## The Trap of Toppling an Entrenched Movement For all her technocratic polish, Delcy Rodriguez is first and foremost a Chavista, a member of the movement Hugo Chavez founded that has ruled Venezuela since 1999. Over a quarter-century, Chavismo has become deeply entrenched at every level of government, national and state alike. And it does not live only in the government. Despite widely shared videos of Venezuelans celebrating Maduro's capture, the movement still commands significant support; the Associated Press reported that armed militia members quickly took to the streets to demand his release. When a movement is that embedded, uprooting it entirely becomes a far costlier project than a surgical, three-and-a-half-hour military operation. It would require the kind of nation-building Washington undertook in the Middle East, an effort that proved deeply unpopular at home. The lesson of those wars hangs over every decision here: removing a regime is the easy part; replacing the entire society it built is what breaks armies and presidencies. ## The Insurgency Risk There is a sharper danger than mere cost, and analysts have named it directly. As Robert Muggah, a researcher and international security expert, argued in The Conversation, installing someone too closely aligned with American interests risked not only tainting the new leader's legitimacy but also deepening Venezuela's polarization. In his view, it would reinforce the narrative of imperial imposition that Chavismo has long peddled and set the stage for the Chavista movement to mutate into an insurgency. This is the scenario Washington appears most eager to avoid. A defeated faction that accepts its loss is manageable. A wounded, well-armed movement convinced it is fighting a foreign occupier is a long, bloody problem with no clean exit. By keeping a Chavista at the helm, Washington blunts the imperial-imposition narrative and denies the movement the rallying cry it would need to take up arms. The choice of Rodriguez, then, is partly an insurance policy against the very insurgency a more aggressive approach might ignite. ## Leverage, Not Trust: The Terms of the Deal None of this means Washington trusts Rodriguez. US officials were blunt with the New York Times: their relationship with her government would depend entirely on her ability to play by their rules. To keep her honest, Washington signaled it would maintain the existing restrictions on Venezuela's oil industry, using sanctions relief as a reward it could grant or withhold. The leverage is deliberate. An economy still choked by sanctions gives the new president every incentive to cooperate. The threat behind that leverage is military. Officials insisted they reserved the right to take further action if Rodriguez failed to respect American interests, a warning Trump amplified in an interview with the Atlantic. "If she doesn't do what's right," he said, "she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro." The message could hardly be clearer. Rodriguez governs at Washington's sufferance, and the same forces that removed her predecessor remain within reach. So if she were ever to face a Maduro-style exit, who would replace her? ## The Opposition That Washington Passed Over For most observers of Venezuela, the natural successors were obvious. After Maduro's ouster, it seemed a near-foregone conclusion that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the opposition figure widely believed to have defeated Maduro in the disputed 2024 elections, would take over. The expectation was so strong that French President Emmanuel Macron issued a statement saying Gonzalez should oversee the transition. After the capture, Gonzalez himself urged the military to help him assume control of the country. If not Gonzalez, then surely Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado, and with good reason. Although Gonzalez had won the 2024 vote, Machado carried the larger political profile. She had been the driving force behind the opposition's resurgence and won its primary in 2023 before Maduro's government barred her from running. She also held genuine international legitimacy, having received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 for championing democracy in Venezuela. And she had cultivated a relationship with Trump, even dedicating her Nobel Prize to him in a gesture many read as positioning for exactly this moment. ## A Stunning Rebuke Then Trump dismissed her, almost immediately. At his press conference, he allowed that Machado was a "very nice woman" but said she lacked "the support within or the respect within the country" to lead. It was a stunning rebuke that caught many observers off guard. Venezuelan opposition figures told the Washington Post that the statement was painful for many in the movement, a bitter pill after years of struggle. The snub was not arbitrary. Two reasons explain why Trump sidelined the very people who had spent years fighting Maduro, and both reveal how starkly Washington weighed power over principle. ## Why the Opposition Holds No Cards The first reason is brutal in its simplicity: neither Gonzalez nor Machado has any real power on the ground. Gonzalez has been in exile in Spain since September 2024, and Machado, who spent eleven months in hiding before slipping out of the country to accept her Nobel Prize, is also abroad. When they called on the Venezuelan diaspora to rally in the streets, they could not, as the Washington Post noted, mobilize a meaningful response inside Venezuela itself. More fundamentally, neither controls the institutions that actually matter. They do not command the military, as Gonzalez discovered. They do not run the intelligence services. They do not control the state oil company. And despite their electoral success and international recognition, there is a real fear their domestic support is greatly exaggerated. Given the deep loyalty to Maduro that persists across parts of the military and intelligence apparatus, it is entirely plausible that their lives would be in constant danger. The doubt runs deeper still. As Charles Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Venezuela, told CNN, it is hard to know whether even the people who voted for the opposition in 2024 were true believers or simply voters fed up with a collapsed economy. He estimated that at least 20 percent of the population, possibly more, still backed Maduro's government, a constituency that could become a serious problem if it turned toward armed insurgency. ## The Nobel Prize Trump Coveted The second reason is more personal. According to sources who spoke to the Post, Trump chose not to elevate Machado specifically because she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor he has long coveted. Although she ultimately dedicated the award to him, the president allegedly regarded her acceptance of it as the ultimate sin. One source put it starkly: "If she had turned it down and said, 'I can't accept it because it's Donald Trump's,' she'd be the president of Venezuela today." Yet the opposition's weakness is also, paradoxically, its value to Washington. Should a moment arrive when Rodriguez must be removed, Gonzalez and Machado become the desirable alternatives precisely because they lack entrenched institutional power. With no independent base, they would be completely dependent on American support to govern and would have little choice but to align with Washington's agenda. The catch is that installing either would require a sustained American military presence to prop them up, a commitment Washington appears reluctant to make. Their dependency is an asset only if the United States is prepared to pay for it. ## The Men With Guns If Washington wanted to keep a Chavista in power but distrusted Rodriguez, regional observers identified two other figures who could plausibly hold the country together: Diosdado Cabello, the current Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace, and Vladimir Padrino Lopez, a four-star general serving as Minister for Defense. Their power is concrete in a way the opposition's is not. Lopez is a popular figure within the Venezuelan army, while Cabello controls the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN), the national police, and the prison system, making them two of the most powerful men in the country. As Brian Naranjo, a former senior US diplomat who served in Venezuela, told the Wall Street Journal: "Those are the two guys who control Venezuela right now. These are the guys who command people with guns." For Washington, they represent possible fallback options, but the question is whether they would cooperate. Lopez has been outspoken in criticizing American actions, while Cabello has stayed quieter, and both have been sanctioned by the United States, which previously offered $25 million for information leading to Cabello's arrest and $15 million for Padrino. For now, according to the Journal, both appear to be playing ball and have thrown their support behind Rodriguez. Whether that holds once the heaviest pressure from Washington eases is anyone's guess. ## Why Not Just Hold Elections? Given all of this, the obvious question is why Venezuela does not simply hold elections. A genuine vote would let Venezuelans choose a government that reflects their wishes, a welcome change after the contested 2024 contest, and it would grant any new government legitimacy in the eyes of both its own people and the international community. The Venezuelan constitution even points that way, requiring the interim government to hold elections within 30 days if the president becomes incapable of holding office. Trump, however, poured cold water on the idea of a near-term vote, saying elections would be held "at the right time." Rubio echoed that caution. In an interview with ABC, the secretary of state acknowledged that elections were needed because neither the Maduro government nor, by extension, the Rodriguez government, held electoral legitimacy, but called it absurd to demand a vote so soon. An election will eventually come, and the figures named here are likely to be involved in one way or another. The timing, though, will be set as much in Washington as in Caracas. ## A Future Suspended Between Two Capitals Whoever Venezuelans ultimately choose will inherit a punishing task. On one side stand the Venezuelan people, who need a leader capable of repairing a deeply broken economy, not only for the American companies poised to invest in the oil sector, but for ordinary citizens who have endured years of hyperinflation, food shortages, and collapsing public services. On the other side stands Washington, which will demand compliance with American interests, particularly favorable terms for oil development and assurances that Venezuela does not become a haven for Chinese or Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere. Those demands carry a real price. Meeting them would mean cutting or at least curbing ties with China, a country that has poured billions into Venezuela's economy over the past two decades. The economic shock of that realignment would be significant and, for many Venezuelans, unwelcome. What happens next, then, will not be decided in Caracas alone. Venezuela's future rests in the hands of its own people and in the hands of officials in Washington, and the needs of those two groups may not align. Whether the country emerges as a genuinely democratic state or simply becomes another place where American economic interests outweigh local aspirations will depend on how this delicate balance is managed in the months ahead. The precedent being set marks a new chapter in the complicated relationship between the United States and Latin America, one whose ripple effects will be felt across the region for years to come. ## Frequently Asked Questions **What happened to Nicolas Maduro?** On January 3, 2026, American special forces captured Maduro in Caracas and evacuated him aboard the USS Iwo Jima, a warship that had been operating off Venezuela's coast. He was taken to New York, where the White House released video of him being walked through DEA offices. He is set to stand trial on charges including narcoterrorism. **Who is running Venezuela now?** Venezuela's Supreme Court installed Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as acting president to preserve administrative continuity. Trump said the United States would "run" Venezuela until a proper transition could be ensured, but in practice that means working through Rodriguez and her allies rather than governing directly. **Why did Washington back Rodriguez instead of the opposition?** Reporting indicates Washington settled on Rodriguez weeks before the operation, impressed by her management of the oil industry and assured she would protect American energy investments. Keeping a Chavista in power was also seen as a way to avoid a destabilizing power struggle and reduce the risk of the movement turning into an armed insurgency. **Why were Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Corina Machado passed over?** Both are outside Venezuela, Gonzalez in exile in Spain and Machado abroad after months in hiding, and neither controls the military, intelligence services, or state oil company. Trump also reportedly resented Machado's acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, an award he has long coveted, despite her dedicating it to him. **What leverage does the United States hold over Rodriguez?** Washington kept existing oil sanctions in place to use as leverage and signaled it could ease them in exchange for cooperation. Officials also reserved the right to use military force again, with Trump warning that Rodriguez could "pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro" if she failed to respect American interests. **Who are Diosdado Cabello and Vladimir Padrino Lopez?** Cabello is the Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace and controls the Bolivarian Intelligence Service (SEBIN), the national police, and the prison system. Padrino Lopez is a four-star general and Minister for Defense, popular within the army. Both have been sanctioned by the United States but currently back Rodriguez, and both are seen as potential alternatives who command real force. **Will there be elections in Venezuela?** The Venezuelan constitution requires elections within 30 days when a president cannot hold office, but Trump said a vote would come "at the right time," and Rubio called demands for an immediate election absurd. An election is expected eventually, with many of the figures named here likely to play a role, though its timing remains uncertain. ## Sources - [New York Times: Trump, Venezuela, Rodriguez, Machado](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/04/world/americas/trump-venezuela-leader-rodriguez-machado.html) - [India Today: Trump Venezuela plan, US strike on Caracas](https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/trump-venezuela-plan-us-strike-carcas-nicolas-maduro-maria-machado-nobel-delcy-rodriguez-2846787-2026-01-05) - [Washington Post: US-Venezuela plan, Trump, Rubio, Miller](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/04/us-venezuela-plan-trump-rubio-miller/) - [CNBC: Trump on Venezuela](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/03/trump-venezuela.html) - [India Today: What Trump said on Nobel laureate Maria Machado](https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/what-trump-said-on-nobel-laureate-maria-machado-as-potential-venezuelan-leader-2846180-2026-01-04) - [ABC News: Trump on Venezuelan opposition leader's ability to govern](https://abcnews.go.com/International/trump-venezuelan-opposition-leader-respect-govern-after-maduro/story?id=128868550) - [Wall Street Journal: Venezuela's men with guns remain the ultimate power](https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuelas-men-with-guns-remain-the-ultimate-power-after-maduros-ouster-ef16681a) - [BBC News](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgx0ylzy8vo) - [NBC News: Venezuela, Trump, Maduro](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/venezuela-trump-maduro-rcna252177) - [El Pais: With Maduro in US custody, who governs in Venezuela](https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-01-03/with-maduro-in-us-custody-who-governs-in-venezuela.html) - [New York Post: Marco Rubio says Venezuelan VP Delcy Rodriguez isn't a legitimate leader](https://nypost.com/2026/01/04/us-news/marco-rubio-says-venezuelan-vp-delcy-rodriguez-isnt-a-legitimate-leader/) - [El Pais: Has the democratic transition begun in Venezuela](https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-01-03/has-the-democratic-transition-begun-in-venezuela.html) - [Infobae: Como queda la cupula del regimen chavista tras la captura de Nicolas Maduro](https://www.infobae.com/venezuela/2026/01/03/como-queda-la-cupula-del-regimen-chavista-tras-la-captura-de-nicolas-maduro/) <!-- youtube:XE_XQ4riqUg -->