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![\"A](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/04\/multimedia\/04us-venezuela-us-diplomacy-wvjl\/04us-venezuela-us-diplomacy-wvjl-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
By Anatoly Kurmanaev<\/a>Tyler Pager<\/a>Simon Romero<\/a> and Julie Turkewitz<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Anatoly Kurmanaev reported from Venezuela, and Tyler Pager from Palm Beach, Fla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jan. 4, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n It was one dance move too many for Venezuela\u2019s President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Maduro in late December rejected an ultimatum from President Trump to leave office and go into a gilded exile in Turkey, according to several Americans and Venezuelans involved in transition talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This week he was back onstage, brushing off the latest U.S. escalation \u2014 a strike on a dock that the United States said was used for drug trafficking \u2014 by bouncing to an electronic beat<\/a> on state television while his recorded voice repeated in English, \u201cNo crazy war.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Maduro\u2019s 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 authorized to talk about the confidential discussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the White House decided to follow through on its military threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Saturday, an elite U.S. military team swooped into Caracas, the capital, in a pre-dawn raid and whisked Mr. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to New York to face drug trafficking charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Weeks earlier, U.S. officials had already settled on an acceptable candidate to replace Mr. Maduro, at least for the time being: Vice President Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, who had impressed Trump officials with her management of Venezuela\u2019s crucial oil industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The people involved in the discussions said intermediaries persuaded the administration that she would protect and champion future American energy investments in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve been watching her career for a long time, so I have some sense of who she is and what she\u2019s about,\u201d said one senior U.S. official, referring to Ms. Rodr\u00edguez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m not claiming that she\u2019s the permanent solution to the country\u2019s problems, but she\u2019s certainly someone we think we can work at a much more professional level than we were able to do with him,\u201d the official added, referring to Mr. Maduro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was an easy choice, the people said. Mr. Trump had never warmed up to the Venezuelan opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, who had organized a winning presidential campaign in 2024, earning her the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Since Mr. Trump\u2019s re-election, Ms. Machado has gone out of her way to please him, calling him a \u201cchampion of freedom,\u201d mimicking his talking points on election fraud in the United States and even dedicating her Peace Prize to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was in vain. On Saturday, Mr. Trump said he would accept Ms. Rodr\u00edguez, saying that Ms. Machado lacked the \u201crespect\u201d needed to govern Venezuela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. officials say that their relationship with Ms. Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s 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\u2019s interests. Despite Ms. Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s public condemnation of the attack, a senior U.S. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr. Trump declared on Saturday that the United States intended to \u201crun\u201d Venezuela for an unspecified period and reclaim U.S. oil interests, an extraordinary assertion of unilateral, expansionist power after more narrow, and also contested, arguments about stopping the flow of drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ms. Rodr\u00edguez, the Trump administration would be engaging a leader of a government that it had routinely labeled illegitimate, while abandoning Ms. Machado, whose movement won a presidential election last year in a victory widely recognized as stolen by Mr. Maduro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it was not immediately clear if Ms. Rodriguez would even play along. In a televised address, she accused the United States of making an illegal invasion and asserted that Mr. Maduro remained Venezuela\u2019s legitimate leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To retain leverage, senior U.S. officials said, restrictions on Venezuelan oil exports would remain in place for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But others involved in the talks expressed hope that the administration would stop detaining Venezuelan oil tankers and issue more permits for U.S. companies to work in Venezuela in order to revive the economy and give Ms. Rodr\u00edguez a shot at political success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms. Rodr\u00edguez, 56, arrives at the job of Venezuela\u2019s interim leader with credentials of an economic troubleshooter who orchestrated the country\u2019s shift<\/a> from corrupt socialism to similarly corrupt laissez-faire capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She is the daughter of a Marxist guerrilla who won fame for kidnapping an American businessman. She was educated partly in France, where she specialized in labor law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She held middling government posts in the government of Mr. Maduro\u2019s predecessor, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, before being promoted to bigger roles with the help of her older brother Jorge Rodr\u00edguez, who eventually became Mr. Maduro\u2019s chief political strategist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms. Rodr\u00edguez managed to stabilize the Venezuelan economy after years of crisis and slowly but steadily grow the country\u2019s oil production amid tightening U.S. sanctions, a feat that earned her even the grudging respect of some American officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Ms. Rodr\u00edguez consolidated control over economic policy and eliminated rivals<\/a>, she built bridges with Venezuela\u2019s economic elites, foreign investors and diplomats, to whom she presented herself as a soft-spoken technocrat and a contrast to the burly security officials forming most of the rest of Mr. Maduro\u2019s inner circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those alliances have borne fruit in recent months, earning her powerful champions that helped to cement her rise to power. On Saturday, her assumption of power was greeted with cautious optimism by some of Venezuela\u2019s captains of industry, who said in private that she had the skills to create growth, if she could persuade the United States to relax its chokehold on the country\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For all her technocratic leanings, Ms. Rodr\u00edguez has never denounced the brutal repression and corruption sustaining Mr. Maduro\u2019s rule, once calling her decision to join the government an act of \u201cpersonal revenge\u201d for her father\u2019s death in prison in 1976, after being interrogated by intelligence agents from pro-U.S. governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms. Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s capacity for negotiating across Venezuela\u2019s ideological chasm could prove useful in easing tensions. Juan Francisco Garc\u00eda, a former ruling party lawmaker who has since broken with the government, said he had some apprehensions about her ability to govern but gave her the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHistory is full of sectors and figures linked to dictators who have, at some point, served as a bridge to stabilize the country and transition to a democratic scenario,\u201d Mr. Garc\u00eda said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The contradictions enveloping Ms. Rodr\u00edguez were on display on Saturday when she addressed the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Mr. Trump said that Ms. Rodr\u00edguez had been sworn in as Venezuela\u2019s new president, it was clear that Mr. Maduro\u2019s supporters \u2014 including Ms. Rodr\u00edguez herself if her remarks are taken at face value \u2014 still see him as Venezuela\u2019s leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spotlighting the potential challenges ahead, even the text on Venezuelan state television labeled her as vice president. People close to the government said those displays of loyalty were a necessary public relations strategy to pacify the ruling party loyalists, including in the armed forces and paramilitary groups, who were reeling from the military humiliation inflicted by the United States on their country and the destruction and death caused by the attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. forces managed to descend into the capital largely unopposed, destroy at least three military bases and grab the country\u2019s president from a heavily guarded compound, without any loss of American life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, the Trump administration has chosen to give Mr. Maduro\u2019s vice president a chance and to pass over Ms. Machado, who won the Nobel Prize and had at least some allies in Mr. Trump\u2019s circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms. Machado, a conservative former member of the National Assembly from an affluent Venezuelan family, boasts decades-long ties to Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has spent the last year<\/a> courting Mr. Trump\u2019s support and trying to enlist his help in ousting Mr. Maduro. She has openly supported<\/a> his military campaign in the Caribbean and mostly refrained from commenting on his policies toward Venezuelan migrants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On Saturday, after Mr. Trump announced that the U.S. military had captured Mr. Maduro, she released a statement saying that she was ready to lead. \u201cToday we are prepared to assert our mandate and seize power,\u201d she wrote in a message<\/a> she posted on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But roughly two hours later, Mr. Trump said they had not spoken. It would be \u201cvery tough\u201d for Ms. Machado to take control of her country, Mr. Trump said, adding in his televised speech<\/a> that she was a \u201cvery nice woman\u201d but \u201cdoesn\u2019t have the support\u201d in Venezuela to lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A spokeswoman for Ms. Machado declined to comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor Trump, democracy is not a concern \u2014 it is about money, power, and protecting the homeland from drugs and criminals,\u201d said Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a research institute in Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his speech to the nation, Mr. Trump also made no mention of Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez, the retired diplomat who became Ms. Machado\u2019s political surrogate after she was barred from running. Mr. Gonz\u00e1lez, who is in self-imposed exile in Spain, is considered the legitimate winner, by a wide margin, of the 2024 election, even though Venezuelan authorities handed the victory to Mr. Maduro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Mar\u00eda Victoria Ferm\u00edn, Mariana Mart\u00ednez and Isayen Herrera from Caracas, Venezuela.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anatoly Kurmanaev<\/a> covers Russia and its transformation following the invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tyler Pager<\/a> is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Nicol\u00e1s](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/01\/03\/multimedia\/03us-venezuela-us-diplomacy-wgkf\/03us-venezuela-us-diplomacy-wgkf-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")
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![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/03\/multimedia\/03us-venezuela-us-diplomacy-05-khmw\/03us-venezuela-us-diplomacy-05-khmw-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale\")