Covering Venezuela back in, say, August, when I had a feeling about what was coming but no one else cared, was difficult. Resources were lacking, and I often had to go with my gut. Covering Venezuela in January, so far, has been difficult because it’s like drinking water out of a firehose — there’s so much information out there, and I’d say 80% of it is either incorrect, biased, or a lot more nuanced than people want to admit.
Suddenly, everyone in the MSM — and even some in conservative media, I hate to say — is an expert on a country they thought little about until recently, which results in a lot of chaos and disinformation in the news. We joke about these leftist protesters trading in their “Free Palestine” flags and posters for “Free Nicolás Maduro” ones, but the truth is that the pundits and reporters often do the same thing.
Marco Rubio summed it up when he appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday and said that “most of the ‘experts’ people have on television, I watch these experts and it’s clown hour. These are people that have focused their entire career on the Middle East or some other part of the world because that’s where all the action was. Very few of them know anything about Venezuela or the Western Hemisphere.”
So, here is what I can tell you about what’s next for Venezuela: No one outside the White House knows. I don’t know. You don’t know. The loudest reporters, anchors, and pundits in the rest of the media don’t know — even the ones with the fancy anonymous sources who claim to be insiders, even the ones with the big names who get all the attention. None of them know.
I’d also be willing to bet that inside the White House, they don’t know exactly because extracting a complex and corrupt authoritarian regime that’s been embedded for nearly three decades isn’t a predictable operation and certainly not something that happens overnight. I’m sure there’s an action for every predictable reaction planned, and Donald Trump is bold enough and Rubio is smart enough to execute it.
But there are a couple of things that I’m seeing widespread misinformation on that I’d like to correct.
Myth 1: The United States endorses or is legitimizing Delcy Rodríguez.
Earlier this week, the Maduro regime swore in “Vice President” Delcy Rodríguez as interim president. Rubio has been in touch with her, and Trump has said she’s being cooperative and willing to work with him, but has warned that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
Somehow, many in the media have taken this and run with it as a ringing endorsement, as if having her in power is the endgame assuming she cooperates with the United States. It is not.
I can promise you that the Donald Trump administration will never recognize Delcy Rodríguez as president of Venezuela in any way, shape, or form.
She’s just a pawn. If she’s a good pawn, she may eventually get amnesty and escape to some delightful country across the Atlantic Ocean. If she’s a bad pawn, well, I can only think of one price bigger than what Maduro is currently paying.
Rubio appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday and reassured the world that the U.S. doesn’t recognize Rodríguez any more than we did Maduro. “We don’t believe that this regime in place is legitimate via an election, and that’s not just us,” he said. “It’s 60-something countries around the world that have taken that view as well, including the European Union.”
But, he added, they need someone who can facilitate what the U.S. needs in the earliest stages of this extraordinary transition of power, and in a nest full of snakes, she’s the easiest one to handle. She’s also the one who holds the keys to the black market oil deals and signs the contracts with China, Russia, and Iran, but I’m going to write much more about that later this week.
Trump and Rubio aren’t negotiating with this woman; they’re squeezing her. You may see headlines from time to time about her anti-U.S. rhetoric, but for now, it’s meaningless. As Rubio says, we’ll judge her by her actions, not what she says on state TV.
Real leadership for the country will come after a period of transition and. most likely, after legitimate elections are held. We have no idea how long that will take, but Trump has said at least not within the next 30 days.
Myth 2. The Trump Administration is snubbing María Corina Machado and sidelining the opposition.
When asked about opposition leader Machado, Trump has come across as dismissive this week. He said he likes her very much but that she doesn’t have the respect or popularity required to take over right now and couldn’t win an election without his help.
Even Rubio, who has known Machado for many years and has supported her through many ups and downs, who reportedly speaks to her regularly, and who has written and said so many nice things about her, including referring to her as Venezuela’s “Iron Lady,” has, on the surface, kind of brushed her aside.
Many in the media have decided that the Trump administration does not take Machado seriously. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ll even go out on a limb and say they’re quietly paving the way for her to become president in the future.
If they were to do anything less than that, I don’t think it would go over well with millions of Venezuelans who are currently incredibly grateful for our president, but it won’t happen immediately.
Admittedly, they even tricked me for a minute. I watched Rubio on Face the Nation on Sunday and was disappointed by it. I can’t recall another time over the past decade and a half when I have disagreed with our dear secretary of State. But when I found myself agreeing with Margaret Brennan, who acted like Rubio was turning on Machado, I knew something was terribly wrong.
So, this is why I stopped everything and reached out to Estrella Infante, a brilliant Venezuelan opposition-aligned lawyer who knows her stuff. She assured me: “Venezuelans know, without doubt, that María Corina Machado is the legitimate leader chosen by the people.” But she added, “At this moment, however, María Corina does not control the internal coercive power necessary to guarantee a peaceful transition.”
That’s when it occurred to me — the Trump administration is not dismissing her. Trump’s talk of popularity and respect is not about the Venezuelan people at all, like Brennan and many others in the MSM are making it out to be. It’s about the regime and institutions still in place that would never honor the results of the 2024 elections. They would probably not even let Machado live unless she’s in a prison.
This is exactly the reason that, up until her daring escape to Oslo, Norway, last month, Machado lived in hiding. It’s why President-Elect Edmundo González lives in exile in Spain. It’s why his son-in-law was kidnapped while taking his children to school. It’s why Marggie Orozco is serving 30 years in prison for telling her starving neighbors not to vote for Maduro. It’s why you don’t see the streets of Caracas filled with celebrations like you do in other countries around the world
Related: Here’s Why People Aren’t Celebrating in Venezuela
I took one for the team and rewatched Rubio’s interviews with that in mind.
“I have tremendous admiration for María Corina Machado…but there’s the mission that we are on right now,” he told Brennan.
He also had this to say on Meet the Press:
First of all, María Corina Machado is fantastic and she’s someone I’ve known for a very long time… But we are dealing with the immediate reality. The immediate reality is that, unfortunately – and sadly – but unfortunately, the vast majority of the opposition is no longer present inside of Venezuela. We have short-term things that have to be addressed right away. We all wish to see a bright future for Venezuela, a transition to democracy. All of these things are great and we all want to see that. I have worked on that for 15 years on a personal level, both in the Senate and now as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. These are things I still care about, we still care about.
He hasn’t changed his tune at all. It’s strategy. He’s got to convince the snakes in the nest to keep working with him, and that’s not going to happen if he shows up all over our TVs singing Machado’s praises. He’s playing the long game and rightfully so.
Infante also reminded me, “Rubio understands Venezuela better than anyone in U.S. politics. He knows their tactics. He knows how they lie, stall, and manipulate. He will see through Delcy — but he cannot act prematurely before the internal balance of power becomes clearer or before Washington understands the regime’s next move.”
Machado herself appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program last night, and she could not have been more gracious or appreciative toward Donald Trump and the United States for our recent actions. This is not a woman who has been dismissed in any form. If you ask your CNNs and your Daily Beasts, she was “desperate,” but that simply wasn’t the case. She was elated.
Machado said she hasn’t spoken personally with Trump since she won the Nobel Peace Prize — though I know for a fact she’s been in contact with numerous other high-level U.S. politicians. She also said that she believes Trump deserves the prize, and that his actions on January 3 prove that even further.
“But I do want to say, on behalf of the Venezuelan people, how grateful we are for his courageous vision and the historic actions he’s taken against the narco-terrorist regime to start dismantling this structure and bringing Maduro to justice, which means that 30 million Venezuelans are now closer to freedom, but also, the United States of America is a safer country,” she said. She didn’t waver, and she spoke with the confidence of someone who knows more than any CNN reporter.
🚨 BOOM! María Corina Machado on Hannity just poured out gratitude to President Trump:
“I do want to say on behalf of the Venezuelan people how grateful we are for Trump’s courageous vision.”
pic.twitter.com/eYmY0Qt4fb— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) January 6, 2026
She added that a free Venezuela will eventually mean that the country can become a security shield for the Western Hemisphere, that it will become the “energy hub of the Americas” with open markets, and that the 8 million Venezuelans who fled their country can come home and help build a stronger nation.
This is not a woman who has been dismissed by anyone.
“The goal is to destabilize and neutralize these armed groups so that a secure transition becomes possible,” Infante told me. “When that moment comes, María Corina will rise as the leader to guide Venezuela forward…. She has the people. She has the plan. What she has lacked is protection from a criminal system willing to kill to survive.”
I have absolutely no doubt about that.
In Marco we trust.
“That is why U.S. involvement matters—not to replace Venezuelan leadership, but to keep it alive,” Infante told me. “[Machado’s] team is exceptional. Plans for reconstruction already exist, including the privatization of the oil sector with the United States as a principal strategic partner — aligning Venezuela with Western democratic economies, stabilizing the hemisphere, and preventing future migration crises from being weaponized.”
She added, “And let us not forget: More than 10,000 Venezuelan passports were issued to Hezbollah members under Maduro’s regime—many of whom entered other countries, including the United States, posing as Venezuelans. This is not just Venezuela’s problem. It never was.”
Recommended: 10 Reasons the U.S. Can’t Afford to Ignore Venezuela Anymore
Infante is absolutely correct on that. I’ve also written at length about how the regime was a problem not just for Venezuela but for the United States and every country in the Western Hemisphere. It’s something we all carry on our shoulders together, whether some of us want to admit to it or not.
But there’s something else we have in common: Rubio.
I saw a poll the other day that suggested that our secretary of State is currently the most popular politician in the country from any party. I don’t know if it’s true, and I know it hasn’t always been the case, but I can’t think of any other person who is more in the right place at the right time.
Restoring the principles of the Monroe Doctrine is the single most important foreign policy move we can make for the United States and the entire hemisphere right now, and the Trump administration has made it clear that this is exactly what it intends to do. We’ve got our adversaries breathing down our necks because they’ve been allowed to run amok throughout the Americas. We’ve also got a wave of neighboring countries that are rejecting the socialism and organized crime that have plagued the region for decades and who want to strengthen their relationships with our country right now.
No one can oversee that better than the Spanish-speaking former senator from Florida, a son of Cuban immigrants, who has dedicated 15 years of his life to not just serving our country, but also nurturing these relationships with these countries that are emerging as new or renewed partners and allies.
The path forward in Venezuela won’t be easy, but if it’s done correctly it will be worth it for all of us. And if there is one man who can handle it, it’s the man who is currently in charge of the transition: Marco Rubio.
I haven’t been shy about the fact that I’ve been a big Rubio fan from the moment he first ran for office back in 2010, and I’m not one to blindly trust a politician, but I do believe that if anyone can get Venezuela back on the path toward democracy, it’s him. So, until he proves me otherwise, I’m going to trust that he has an amazing plan. But it’s not just me.
“Many Venezuelans, including myself, are watching the coming days closely,” Infante told me. “We trust Rubio.”
