Rodríguez and her brother represent the same totalitarian regime that Maduro ran – a tyranny that Trump’s own UN ambassador, Mike Waltz, condemned for crimes against humanity.
By John DAVENPORT
Among President Donald Trump’s most shocking foreign policy actions, his stance on Venezuela should receive far more attention from the American public. That’s because, of all Trump’s crimes, his outright support for tyranny in Venezuela is arguably the most egregious. I’m not referring to the decisions by Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to forcefully remove Venezuela’s de facto president, Nicolás Maduro (Maduro lost the last two elections but remained in power by suppressing political opponents). There were plenty of reasons to remove Maduro, even though it should have been done by Latin American leaders — as I’ve argued before.
The gigantic problem is that Trump and Rubio have linked us to Delcy Rodríguez, the interim president of Venezuela, who runs the same thoroughly corrupt narco-military clique that has been disappearing and torturing thousands of innocent Venezuelans for more than 15 years, subjecting many of them to sexual violence, completely destroying the economy of this once-rich country, and forcing almost eight million Venezuelans to flee. Rodríguez herself is suspected by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of drug trafficking and gold smuggling, as well as money laundering. She has been a key part of the mafia that has rigged Venezuela’s elections, terrorized the people, and destroyed democratic institutions. As the George W. Bush Presidential Center has noted, Rodríguez has further intensified the crackdown on independent journalists since her inauguration. Delcy’s brother, Jorge Rodríguez, also heads the sham parliament that Maduro forcibly brought to power after the legally elected legislature ousted Maduro and declared Juan Guaidón interim president in December 2018 — in a plan approved by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during Trump’s first term.
Rodríguez and her brother represent the same totalitarian regime that Maduro ran—a tyranny that Trump’s own UN ambassador, Mike Waltz, condemned for crimes against humanity. Instead of freeing Venezuela from the vampires who drink the blood of its people, we have joined the same criminal network that is closely linked to Vladimir Putin, owes China $30 billion, and is protected by the Cuban tyranny’s special forces, 32 of whom were killed during the U.S. raid to capture Maduro. And as long as Rodríguez’s paramilitary terror machine controls Venezuela, few Venezuelan refugees will return home; more will leave. With no U.S. troops in Venezuela, according to the administration, Rodríguez has a free hand.
So why is our government supporting Rodríguez, instead of handing control to the real winners of Venezuela’s recent elections, the democratic reformers Edmundo González, María Corina Machado, and their party? Perhaps in part because Trump feels insulted—as he has often said—that Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize, which he believes should have been his own (despite his threatening rhetoric about Greenland and his refusal to help Ukraine against Putin’s aggressive war). Desperate to help her suffering people, Machado recently gave Trump her Nobel medal, before sneaking out through a back door. But there are much darker reasons for Trump’s support for Rodríguez. First, she organized a $500,000 donation for his inauguration event in 2025. And, as an Associated Press investigation revealed, she has been working for years to create close allies within American oil corporations.
In a pathetic attempt to justify this disgusting display, Trump has claimed that installing Machado would strip the Venezuelan military of control, repeating the mistake the US made in Iraq in 2003 by removing Saddam Hussein’s entire forces from office. This is sheer nonsense. Cleaning house in Venezuela will require a purge of senior officers, not all state employees. “Stability” in Venezuela does not require nor justify a totalitarian regime that rules through black-shirted thugs on the streets of Caracas.
George W. Bush made some big mistakes in Iraq, no doubt. But there is a much bigger mistake that Bush would never have dreamed of making – putting one of Saddam’s sons or bloodthirsty loyalists in charge of Iraq while we were reaping the oil. I am sure Bush would have been impeached if he had done so. Yet when Trump does the equivalent today, it doesn’t bother the Republican slave leaders in Congress at all. Imagine what it looks like to everyone in Latin America that the United States is installing and supporting a new military dictator as our puppet – the same crime that made our government hated throughout the region for most of the 20th century. This is the surest way to force democratic nations that should be our allies to throw themselves into the arms of Russia and China. Americans thought they had rejected this imperialist nightmare more than half a century ago.
Such an injustice truly calls for the strongest protests and the most peaceful civil disobedience. South Americans would be perfectly justified in imposing a total trade boycott on the United States until this is corrected. This year, Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If Trump and Rubio truly care about the principles of that declaration, then they should allow Machado and her united party to take control in Venezuela. She is the Thomas Jefferson of her people. The United States can keep the Venezuelan forces opposing Machado in check while she reforms the military, rebuilds the infrastructure, and restores the integrity of her country’s public institutions. And all the oil in the world is not worth another day of military dictatorship in Venezuela.