It was one dance move too many for Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.
Maduro in late December rejected an ultimatum from President Donald Trump to leave office and go into a gilded exile in Turkey, according to several Americans and Venezuelans involved in transition talks.
This week he was back onstage, brushing off the latest US escalation — a strike on a dock that the US said was used for drug trafficking — by bouncing to an electronic beat on state television while his recorded voice repeated in English, "No crazy war".
Maduro’s regular public dancing and other displays of nonchalance in recent weeks helped persuade some on the Trump team that the Venezuelan President was mocking them and trying to call what he believed to be a bluff, according to two of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk about the confidential discussions.
So the White House decided to follow through on its military threats.
On Saturday, an elite US military team swooped into Caracas, the capital, in a pre-dawn raid and whisked Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to New York to face drug trafficking charges.
Weeks earlier, US officials had already settled on an acceptable candidate to replace Maduro, at least for the time being: Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez, who had impressed Trump officials with her management of Venezuela’s crucial oil industry.
The people involved in the discussions said intermediaries persuaded the administration that she would protect and champion future American energy investments in the country.
“I’ve been watching her career for a long time, so I have some sense of who she is and what she’s about,” said one senior US official, referring to Rodríguez.
“I’m not claiming that she’s the permanent solution to the country’s problems, but she’s certainly someone we think we can work at a much more professional level than we were able to do with him,” the official added, referring to Maduro.
It was an easy choice, the people said. Trump had never warmed up to the Venezuelan Opposition leader María Corina Machado, who had organised a winning presidential campaign in 2024, earning her the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Since Trump’s re-election, Machado has gone out of her way to please him, calling him a "champion of freedom", mimicking his talking points on election fraud in the US and even dedicating her Peace Prize to him.
It was in vain. On Saturday, Trump said he would accept Rodríguez, saying that Machado lacked the “respect” needed to govern Venezuela.
US officials say that their relationship with Rodríguez’s interim government will be based on her ability to play by their rules, adding that they reserve the right to take additional military action if she fails to respect America’s interests. Despite Rodríguez’s public condemnation of the attack, a senior US official said that it was too soon to draw conclusions about what her approach would be and that the administration remained optimistic that they could work with her.
Trump declared on Saturday that the US intended to “run” Venezuela for an unspecified period and reclaim US oil interests, an extraordinary assertion of unilateral, expansionist power after more narrow, and also contested, arguments about stopping the flow of drugs.
In Rodríguez, the Trump administration would be engaging a leader of a government that it had routinely labelled illegitimate, while abandoning Machado, whose movement won a presidential election last year in a victory widely recognized as stolen by Maduro.
And it was not immediately clear if Rodriguez would even play along. In a televised address, she accused the US of making an illegal invasion and asserted that Maduro remained Venezuela’s legitimate leader.
To retain leverage, senior US officials said, restrictions on Venezuelan oil exports would remain in place for now.
But others involved in the talks expressed hope that the administration would stop detaining Venezuelan oil tankers and issue more permits for US companies to work in Venezuela in order to revive the economy and give Rodríguez a shot at political success.
Rodríguez, 56, arrives at the job of Venezuela’s interim leader with credentials of an economic troubleshooter who orchestrated the country’s shift from corrupt socialism to similarly corrupt laissez-faire capitalism.
The contradictions enveloping Rodríguez were on display on Saturday when she addressed the nation.
While Trump said that Rodríguez had been sworn in as Venezuela’s new President, it was clear that Maduro’s supporters — including Rodríguez herself if her remarks are taken at face value — still see him as Venezuela’s leader.
New York Times News Service