the issue
President Donald Trump’s administration has escalated pressure on Venezuela by moving military assets into the region and executing strikes on alleged drug boats coming from the country.
The developments led Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist and authoritarian leader, to threaten to declare a state of emergency earlier this week.
The Trump administration has described Maduro as an “illegitimate” leader who stole the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election and a “fugitive of American justice.”
But the increasing US-Venezuela tensions have some in both parties calling for more communication with Maduro’s regime, despite the broken diplomatic relations.
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the bond
Semafor reported last week that Ric Grenell, Trump’s special missions envoy, had ruffled some feathers in the administration by openly arguing in favor of diplomacy with Maduro.
“I’ve spoken to Mr. Maduro, I’ve gone down to Venezuela, and I continue to talk to his team,” he said recently on CBS.
Even as he faces blowback from some Trump officials for his stance, Grenell is winning over some unexpected defenders. “He is definitely not a fan of me,” Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., posted on X. “But I hope he succeeds here.”
Gallego was agreeing with a similar sentiment expressed by Tommy Vietor, a onetime spokesman for former President Barack Obama turned Pod Save America host, who sees maintaining a direct line to Maduro as “the obvious thing to do” in order to prevent things from spiraling out of control.
“Open channels of communication have prevented wars throughout our history, and it seems like a best practice here,” Vietor told Semafor — though he added a caveat that he has “no insider information” and that Grenell “could be doing something terrible behind the scenes that I’m not aware of.”
Grenell is not in the driver’s seat of the Trump administration’s Venezuela policy. That task has fallen to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who The New York Times reported earlier this week is among a group of Trump advisers hoping that an escalating military campaign against Venezuelan drug operations will lead to Maduro’s ouster.
“I think that is batsh*t crazy,” Vietor said of the Rubio-backed position. “That is like the least ‘America First,’ most kind of old school — the worst excesses of US foreign policy in Latin America.”
“I wish Nicolás Maduro was gone, I believe he stole the last election, I believe he is a tyrant, I believe he is running that country into the ground, I would like a change of leadership,” Vietor added.
“I just do not think the United States can force that change at gunpoint.”
The View From a former ambassador
Patrick Duddy, who served as US ambassador to Venezuela under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, argued that the Trump administration is leaning on diplomacy in the region — just not directly with Venezuela, where the US has no diplomatic presence.
“There has been a lot of recent diplomatic activity largely being conducted by Secretary Rubio and the Deputy Secretary [Christopher] Landau” with regional players, like Ecuador, Mexico, and others, Duddy said.
The administration is “certainly not publicly suggesting that regime change is the aim of the operation,” he added. “Now, if it were to occur, I don’t think anybody would be sorry to see Maduro go, but that is not the declared goal of this deployment and the related activities.”
Notable
- Trump told Congress this week that the US engaged in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, The New York Times reported.
- The Trump administration isn’t ruling out strikes inside Venezuela as it looks to increase pressure on drug cartels that it has connected to Maduro, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reported.
- Venezuelans who fled Maduro’s government for the US are now seeking refuge in Europe following Trump’s tightening of US immigration restrictions, Reuters reported.