The US has attacked Venezuela and illegally abducted its president, Nicolás Maduro. It’s clearly about oil, despite a weak cover story about drugs. But that doesn’t mean it’s a redo of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In fact, it seems the US may have found a different way to get what it wants this time, with help from at least one government insider: Delcy Rodríguez.
As long as the oil flows, was abducting Maduro enough for Trump?
Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez has now become the acting president. A “moderate” who has overseen some “orthodox economic policies”, she has also been oil minister since 2024. And as Trump has said:
Right now, what we wanna do is fix up the oil
He added:
We’re gonna have to have big investments by the oil companies… And the oil companies are ready to go.
They’re “ready to go”, he clarified, because he spoke to oil companies:
Before and after [the abduction of Maduro]. They want to go in and they’re going to do a great job.
The oil companies were notified before Congress.
This is what an authoritarian oligarchy looks like. https://t.co/23XCzMOAED
— Melanie D’Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) January 5, 2026
With this in mind, Trump also made clear what he expects from Delcy Rodríguez in the coming weeks:
We need total access. We need access to the oil and other things
The reasoning for Trump’s oil grab, he claimed, was:
They took our oil away from us.
It was Venezuela’s oil, of course. And the country didn’t ‘take it away’ from the US.
Rodríguez, however, has already struck a cooperative tone:
Just a day after the US bombed Venezuela and abducted Maduro, Delcy is openly cooperating with Trump and moving forward. No more calls to return Nicolas and Cilia. She’s President now, with Trump’s blessing. Next up, US Embassy reopens in Caracas. pic.twitter.com/ucLzhdOLLw
— Eva Golinger (@evagolinger) January 5, 2026
Trump, meanwhile, has said Delcy Rodríguez is:
essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again
Maduro’s “more pliant” vice president Delcy Rodríguez takes centre stage
The New York Times calls Delcy Rodríguez the orchestrator of a recent growth in oil production despite devastating US sanctions, which “earned her even the grudging respect of some American officials”. This contrasted with the impression that Maduro was mocking Trump’s administration with “regular public dancing and other displays of nonchalance”.
The “more pliant” Rodríguez, meanwhile:
built bridges with Venezuela’s economic elites, foreign investors and diplomats, to whom she presented herself as a soft-spoken technocrat
Regime-change-pushing capitalist extremist María Corina Machado had the backing of the billionaire class to rule Venezuela. But the opposition figure’s highly controversial receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize last year apparently annoyed Trump, who wanted the prize for himself:
Insanity: Sources close to the White House told the Washington Post Trump lost interest in backing Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to lead the country because she accepted her Nobel Peace Prize rather than demanding it be given to Trump, which was viewed as an… pic.twitter.com/FDVLJZCtJ9
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) January 5, 2026
Although Machado tried to butter Trump as much as possible, he has admitted that she doesn’t have enough support or respect within Venezuela to become its leader.
Despite a long history of violent US interventions in Latin America, there have mostly been some quieter destabilisation tactics in the 21st century. In countries like Ecuador and Bolivia, for example, former allies of left-wing leaders shifted the balance rightwards. And the US may be hoping for a similar outcome now in Venezuela.
Was there a deal between Delcy Rodríguez and Trump?
Sources in Venezuela have suggested to the Canary that there’s reason to believe Delcy Rodríguez reached an agreement with the Trump administration. And other experts on the country have similar opinions.
Author and academic Cristina Martín Jiménez says that, considering the lack of “military hysteria” or fighting in the streets, the obvious conclusion is that the betrayal of Maduro was a “controlled operation“. Political scientist Gustavo Azócar agrees.
Eva Golinger, who once advised Hugo Chávez – the forefather of the political movement Maduro and Rodríguez belong to today, says:
The government in Venezuela has been comprised of several groups that have a power-sharing pact… One of those groups – Delcy and her brother Jorge – have now taken power through a meticulous and ‘evil genius’ negotiation with the Trump administration that has been going on for months behind the scenes.
It’s not regime change. The apparatus remain in place, sans Maduro. They made a deal to save their own power and positions. The main difference is that the new heads of government (Delcy & her brother) are more pragmatic than Maduro. Less folklore, more transactional. https://t.co/R9OztjvDao
— Eva Golinger (@evagolinger) January 4, 2026
Jorge was a close adviser and ‘cold‘ strategist for Maduro. And Golinger thinks:
Delcy and her brother have played the long game and it paid off big time.
She added that:
Everything else is noise each side has to make to save face with their supporters.
Former Chávez communications minister Andrés Izarra, meanwhile, said a ‘traitorous‘ Rodríguez deal with the US means:
Venezuela is in the process of losing its independence and autonomy.
Chávez, he stressed, had kept the siblings at a distance for a reason.
A dangerous precedent
The worry for South America now is what the US will do if it sees it can illegally abduct leaders with little effort and get away with it – while people like Delcy Rodríguez do little to stop him.
Trump has already floated abducting Colombia’s leader and launching an operation in Mexico. Administration members, meanwhile, are openly eying Cuba up for intervention.
This is a new phase for US imperialism. And as Trump has threatened:
We can do it again… Nobody can stop us.
No doubt that Rubio’s endgame here is Cuba. Venezuela was a trial balloon to test Trump’s use of military force, invasion, extraordinary rendition, and other CIA/military action, without Congressional approval or popular support in the US. There’s no stopping them from going…
— Eva Golinger (@evagolinger) January 5, 2026
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
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