Transcript of Venezuela, After Maduro

My country is Venezuela, and my name is Jean Rodriguez.

My name is Juan, and I'm in Caracas, in the capital.

My name is Carolina Hill. I live near the most important military complex here in Venezuela. Early January third, it was 1: 57 AM, and I was watching a movie with my sister and everything went completely dark. And five seconds later, we heard the first explosion. I ran to the window to take a look at what was going on. My hands were shaking. I could only see the light of the moon. And we could hear the airplanes, and we could hear the helicopters, but we couldn't see them. And the walls of my building and the windows were shaking. I thought, now the gringos are here. They are attacking Caracas.

Everybody in the city heard the noises. I think we were nervous, but at the same time excited because we thought they were overthrowing the government. They were freeing us from the leadership. My girlfriend and I were crying and screaming. I called my mom. I called my brothers. I called all my family. We were waiting for that for years.

When Donald Trump put up the picture with Maduro captured, I am so happy in that moment. Oh, my God, man. Honestly, I cried for that picture. It's finished that. This, hell.

This felt like a real victory. Like someone in this government that has done so much damage to my country is going to finally face real justice.

After this attack, we were like, Okay, they did it, but what's the meaning of that? What will come for us? I mean, what's the next step? Because, okay, they took Maduro out, but we have Delci, we have Padrino López, we have Jorge Rodríguez. I mean, they are still here.

Other people, government is free. I am confused the future in Venezuela really, really is unsentained, and the people don't know what will happen. The people is so scared. It's so scared.

From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowaf. This is The Daily. On Monday, as Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia, pleaded not not guilty in a Manhattan courtroom, the nearly 30 million people of Venezuela struggled to absorb the reality of a post-Maduro era, an era in which the United States appears to be the dominant force reshaping their once firmly anti-American government. Today, my colleague, Anatoly Kermenev explains why President Trump chose to back a Maduro loyalist to run the country and what Venezuela Netherlands think of it all. It's Tuesday, January sixth. Hi, Anatoly. Welcome. It's good to have you here.

Thanks for having me, Natalie.

In the last couple of days, we at the show have talked about how this operation to capture Nicolas Maduro went down. We've talked about the legality of it. What we haven't talked about as much is who is running Venezuela right now and how is all of that going to play out? Because that feels very uncertain in this moment. You've been in the country as this all has been going on through the mission itself. You're in Caracas right now. So just to start, how does it feel there?

It feels surreal. The city is still coming out of Christmas holidays. It's a metropolis of more than 4 million people, and it's full of lights and decoration. I was driving through the the city last night, and the city was completely deserted. There was not a single soul on the streets. No sounds to be made. It felt like I was in a zombie movie. I think it just sums up this atmosphere of expectation, of fear, of concern. It's just tense. We have not seen mass signs of jubilation at the fall of Nicolas Maduro. At the same time, we have not seen any genuine mass outpourings of grieving for him and his wife. This atmosphere of quiet tension is taking place amid growing signs of repression, of people being detained, of journalists being harassed, which shows to me that even though this government has a new face, the brutal repressive apparatus that has kept it in power for decades, remains in place and is cracking down again.

It sounds like everyone in Venezuela is just waiting with baited breath for what's to come. Let's get into that. My first question is, is what we're seeing actually regime change? Because now that the dust has settled a little bit, it seems as though the regime is actually still in power in Venezuela.

That's right, Natalie. The regime is in place. The people who are no longer here is Maduro and his wife, and around 80 people have died between his Cuban bodyguards and Venezuelan civilians, Venezuelan security service members. But beyond that, we have seen the same cast of characters. Most of his inner circle is intact, it is in power, and is led by Delce Rodriguez, known universally as Delce, who was Maduro's vice president, who was the first in line to replace him under any circumstances. So the same characters are ruling the country.

Okay, so Delce Rodriguez, the vice President now in power, is someone that Trump has endorsed. The administration says they're going to be working directly with her. I want to talk about Why? Why her? Because honestly, when you and I have talked about this, the most obvious choice for who was going to work with the Trump administration in the event that Maduro was no longer in power was someone else. It was Maria Karina Machado, this famous opposition leader. So explain for me, Anatoly, why it's not Machado and why it's Delcey instead.

The short answer is continuity. Trump wanted to stop the flood of drugs from Venezuela. He wanted the flood of migrants, But above all, he made it very clear he wanted Venezuelan oil. And Delcey Rodriguez has been able to sell herself as a reliable guardian of Venezuela's oil industry, as a person who can manage Venezuela's resources and protect foreign interests, which in this case would be American investor interests.

And Machado was not able to sell herself as that figure?

She was not. And this is perhaps the biggest surprise of this theme. Machado is by far the most popular politician in the country. She has led an election campaign in 2024 that has led more than 70% of Venezuelans to vote for the opposition. She has won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts. She has global recognitions and global respect. And she comes with impeccable conservative credentials. She's the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. She has an impeccable record of supporting free markets, of supporting personal freedom, supporting Christian faith, all values at the heart of traditional Republican agenda. But she's a product of a different period of American politics. Machado's gravest mistake was not being able to adapt to the transformation that Trump has brought to the American right.

What do you mean by that exactly?

Well, the adjective that defines Machado more than anything else is consistency. She has been extremely consistent in her belief. She has been extremely consistent in her political agenda. And This consistency is what brought her to the cost of gaining power in Venezuela during the last elections. This is the reason why she has galvanized Venezuelan populations because people believed in her. They believed in her values. They believed in what she stood for and that she would defend them, that she would not negotiate with Maduro, that she would not sell them out. This consistency was at its core. But in the current transactional Washington of today, this has become a liability. She has not been able to adjust to a very transactional approach to politics that we see in Washington, a ideologically agnostic approach to Washington, where beliefs and policies are ditched and sacrificed and adjust it on a daily basis to suit the whims of people taking power. This has gradually led her to lose allies and make a growing number of enemies in the Trump administration, which eventually has contributed to her being sidelined at this crucial moments in Venezuelan history.

Okay, can you go a little deeper there? Give me examples of how she wasn't able to adjust.

For example, when Trump returns to power, his initial focus on Venezuela is getting Americans detained there, out of jail, and back into the United States. And he sends his envoy. He sends a man called Richard Grinnell, a businessman and former ambassador to Germany, to Caracas, to negotiate the deal. And then Grinnell arrives in Caracas, he reaches to Machado because she's the representative of Venezuelan opposition. She's seen at the time as representative of American interest. And he starts a dialog. He starts a relationship that very quickly goes off rails because getting Americans out means talking to Maduro's government means negotiating. Negotiating is an anaphyma for Maria Karina Machado. She has argued for decades that freedom is not negotiable, that democracy is not negotiable, that there can be no compromises. And that set the stage for a train wreck between Richard Grinnell and Maria Karina Machado, a clash that has repeated itself over and over throughout the Trump administration as she lost natural allies and created new enemies.

You're saying basically Machado is such a purist that she's totally opposed to any notion of negotiating with Maduro, and this alienated Trump's lead negotiator in Venezuela who's there to try to get a deal.

He was there to try to get a deal, and he's there to get economic deals. He started negotiating a deal with Maduro's officials that would see Maduro hand over Venezuelan resources in return for him staying in power, at least for the time being. Again, this goes completely against everything that Machado has stood for. Over time, in the months since the election, as Venezuelan government stopped up in repression, Machado's movement became increasingly marginalized in Venezuelan political life. They increasingly had to flee in exile. Machado herself had to go into hiding. They have gradually lost touch with what is happening on the streets in Venezuela. Their uncompromising position meant they had very few contacts inside Venezuelan government. Then the Trump administration, they have gradually come to realize that the strategies that Machado and her aides were providing to Washington were outdated, were not accurate. The intelligence or the assumptions being made by the opposition have proved wrong time and again. This has angered officials in the Trump administration that were trying to work out a credible plan of getting Maduro out of power.

It sounds like they start to sour on her in part because they don't believe she's giving valuable intel. That's despite the fact that, as we know, in recent months, Machado was really doing everything she could to ingratiate herself with the Trump administration as they to dial up the pressure on Maduro. She even dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump. I guess all that wasn't enough.

All that wasn't enough. To me, there's a certain tragic element to this because this is a politician with impeccable moral credentials. Machado has built her presidential campaign on the focus on Venezuelan migrants, of reuniting Venezuelan families, of returning the millions of Venezuelans that have fled the country from Maduro, bringing them back home. And since Trump took power, she has stopped talking about Venezuelan migrants because these are the people that Trump was arresting, Trump was deporting, Trump was jailing in foreign jails where they were tortured. And Machado stayed silent. As flights into the country were gradually canceled under American pressure, she stayed silent. As inflation rose under tightening American sanctions, complicating people's daily life, she has stayed silent. And this has caused a political capital inside the country. She has sacrificed a lot of political goodwill that she has built inside Venezuela to please this one man. She has gone out of her way to praise him. She has published op-eds saying that Trump is the greatest defender of freedom in the Western hemisphere. It was very clear to everyone observing Venezuela that Machado is speaking to the audience of one, and her entire strategy has been on bringing Trump to her side.

And so far, she has failed.

You know, Trump said in this big press conference he gave over the weekend that Machado just didn't have the support in Venezuela. So was that actually true, based on what you just said?

Credible polling in Venezuela is very limited, but the evidence we have shows that her popular support has been gradually, very slowly sipping away from a very high point. Crucially for Trump, when he says that she doesn't have a respect, he is talking about respect to the people that would make it possible for her to govern. Machado's inflexibility and focus on pressure rather than negotiation has meant that she has lost the support of Venezuela's economic leads that have traditionally supported their position. Venezuela has for decades, been informally governed by groups of rich businessmen who have, among themselves, divided Venezuelan economy. It was an old boys club for many decades. These people had a natural repulsion to chavismo and everything that stood for the people from the slums coming in, taking power and telling them what to do. But as time went on, things began to change. More and more captains of the Venezuelan industry realized that if they wanted to continue working in Venezuela, They had to come to an understanding with the government. They had to live with the government. Machado's message is overhauling this completely. Scraping this whole system is starting from scratch. And business wants stability, and they turn against Machado's message of radical change.

While at the same time, she has not been able to gain the support or the armed forces that she herself has constantly said are crucial to remove in Maduro. She has, again, to please Trump, she has gone out of her way to mimic his talking point that Venezuelan government is a narco-courtel. She has mimicked his language that Maduro is flooding United States with drugs and criminals. This has meant that for the officers watching her speeches, for the members of the government, for the people that actually make the state tick and hold the guns, that she was painting them as members of the narco-courtel, as part of a problem as people that need to be eliminated from the New Zealand's public life. And the dissonance between her calls for the armed forces and government employees to rise up against Maduro and the way she has branded them as members of an archa-curtel ended up spelling her political downfall inside the Venezuelan political system.

Ironically, in order to align herself with Trump, Machado starts saying these things that actually alienate all these elites within Venezuela that she actually needs to have on board in order to persuade the Trump administration that she's a viable candidate to run the country. Is that right?

That's right. That's exactly what happened. These are people that have been in charge for a very long time. And the Trump administration became convinced that to get the country running quickly, to keep it stable, to keep it from collapsing and sending hundreds of thousands of migrants to its borders, to keep the oil flowing to the United States, to boost that flow of oil, they needed to work with people who were already in charge. And that's why we picked Delcie over Maria Karina Machado. That's the great irony of the current political drama that Delcie, despite of her Marxist roots, despite being the handpicked protégé of a person labeled as a narco-terrorist by the United States, despite playing a crucial part in a repressive machine, the White House has decided that she is the most likely candidate among the available options to bring Venezuela into the American sphere of influence.

We'll be right back. Okay, let's talk about Venezuela's new leader who, as you said, everyone calls Delcey. She sounds like an unlikely choice for the Trump administration in many ways to support. Explain who she is and what the Trump administration sees in her.

First and foremost, they see Delcey as a capable economic manager and that reputation that she has earned has come at the end of a very unexpected journey. She is the daughter of a Marxist guerrilla who was tortured by the security forces of a previous pro-American government during a Cold War. She comes from a background of impeccable socialist credentials, but they also come from money. She enjoyed quite a privileged upbringing. She went to university in France, and she joined the government, the current regime, under the wings of her older brother, going up in the ranks of a Chavismo government. And that rise really accelerated Around 2019, then Venezuela is facing tremendous economic pressure from United States that had just sanctioned its oil industry. The revenues have collapsed. The Maduro government has struggled to just keep the lights on in the country. And Maduro turns to Delcey and basically tells her to fix it.

And what does she do? Does she fix it?

She completely reengineers Venezuelan economy. She and a group of technocrats, ally to her, began a process that, in a very short period, discarded the socialist tropes that the government had based its legitimacy on for many years. Price control, currency controls, focus on the needs of Venezuelan poor, and turned it into a free-for-all market economy where money ruled and investment was the only merit.

It's so interesting that the daughter of a Marxist became this trusted steward of something approaching capitalist reform.

In many ways, Venezuela is an extremely corrupt country, and it is as corrupt today as it was under the nominally socialist principles. But in terms of actual policies, Delci has turned Venezuela into a radically capitalist society that there's practically no regulation, that there are practically no rules, that money is the only variable that govern society and governs the interaction between the states and the citizens.

But did it work, though? Did it stabilize the economy, which is what Maduro was originally asking for?

It did work and led to a period of moderate growth. Starting in 2021, the inflation subsided. People started to open up businesses. People started to travel more. The oil production began to gradually edge up. Remember, Natalie, that this has all started from a very low base. We're not talking about Dubai of Latin America, but we're talking about a country that had suffered a tremendous economic collapse where millions have led, where people have suffered from malnutrition. It gave them a modicum of economic stability.

Okay, so it sounds like the reforms that Delcey helped engineer, they didn't bring wealth back en masse to Venezuelans, but they did write the economic ship. They helped stanch the bleeding. Did that do anything to help the regime standing with Venezuelans? I mean, obviously, they still voted for the opposition in the last election, so I would imagine the answer is no, right?

The answer is no. The elections of 2024 have proven that the government had gone out of its way to sell itself to Venezuela. There's weeish stability. The opposition is chaos. Stick with us. You can live with us. You can breathe with us. And still more than 70% of Venezuelans, including massive proportions of public sector workers and the poor voted for the opposition, voted for the candidate of Maria Karina Machado, showing just the scale of exhaustion and repulsion that this population has against President Maduro.

What about the elites that we talked about earlier? How do they see Delcy in all of this?

Delce's reforms gave them space to grow, gave them space to invest. Again, not talking about massive investments. We're not talking about tremendous growth. We're talking about a climate where people that have money can start making more money.

It's really interesting, right? Because Machado, in many ways, is a more natural ally of theirs, too, right? She comes from this family they probably know, this industrialist. She has these impeccable credentials as a free market capitalist. And yet here, she's the one with the broad-based popular support who's lost the support of these elites, while Delcie doesn't have that popular support, it sounds like, but she has one over this group of business Titans that is still incredibly influential in this country.

This This is a fundamental paradox, Natalie. I could not have summarized it better. I think all it just goes to show that economic freedoms do not always correlate with political freedoms. The reality is that for Trump, What matters to him is the deals and the investment of the elites. That has led him to gradually ally with Delci, the self-styled technocrat who would bring him, Venezuelan riches, over Maria Curreira Machado who was promising political liberation, but a very volatile and unstable economic environment.

Okay, so now I think I get why Delci is preferable to Machado in the eyes of Trump. What I still don't understand, though, is why Delci is preferable to Maduro. Because you've told us, Anatoly, the few times that you've come on to talk about this, that Maduro was actually happy to let the US into Venezuela's oil fields, to give up those natural resources as part of a potential deal with Trump. Why did Trump reject that, only to go for what sounds like a very similar deal with Delcey?

I don't think we have perfect clarity to that question at the moment, Natalie. My hunch is that the campaign against Maduro, the campaign to brand him a narco-terrorist, and the cartel chief who is at war with the United States has gone simply too far for Trump to tolerate him and make a deal with him. I remember that While oil is the driving force of Trump's policy towards Venezuela, it's not the only one. There are advisors within his administration. There are people in his administration that are pushing towards our goals. There's Stephen Miller with his focus on migration and illegal drugs. There's Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who has been a declared anticommunist warrior, these people have been sworn enemies of Maduro. And as Maduro repeatedly rebuffs Trump administration's attempts to provide him a soft landing, to provide him a golden parachute, Trump's position hardens. And by December, his patience finally snaps. Maduro's response to increasingly explicit ultimatums from America was to present himself as a care-free patier. He constantly dances on television. He Sings No Crazy War.

No, Clara.

He's a good dancer. He puts up the moves, and he does on regular basis. At some point, Trump snaps.

Wait, are you saying, Anatoly, that Maduro dancing on national television is an actual factor here in everything that ends up happening?

My understanding, it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Meaning what exactly? That Trump saw Maduro dancing and said, This guy's not taking me seriously? Or what?

Meaning that Trump saw the ongoing dancing as a humiliation, as Maduro calling Trump's bluff as Maduro telling Trump, I'm here, and I'm here for as long as I want to be. And Trump could not tolerate what he saw as a personal affront.

Wow. We are truly living in wild times.

Remember, naturally, history is often made by seemingly small, banal circumstances. It's an accumulation of major factors, major forces like oil, migration, drugs. But it can be something as small as a little techno dance on a public stage that can sift this cares. So it's a momentous policy decision that will change the history of Western hemisphere, perhaps forever.

Okay. We'll have plenty of time to talk about that future. But for now, the Trump administration is counting on Delcey. This is someone who, in the last few days, has come out very strongly against them. It's worth saying. She said Maduro is the only President of Venezuela. She refers to herself as the Vice President. I'm wondering what we should make of that. I know that there are a lot of people from the regime that are still in power in the country. I wonder if this is her playing to them, to that domestic audience. She has to appease them, right?

That's right. Remember that the attack was a major humiliation to the armed forces and security officials that formed the core of Maduro's regime. It was an operation that caused the life of 80 people, causing major destructions in capital Caracas. Delsy could not just wave us off and open her arms to America Americans. She has to satisfy the domestic audience. She has to show to the ruling parties faithful who are not numerous in numbers, but who hold a lot of guns, that she's not an American porn, that she's someone who will defend the country's sovereignty, someone who will defend the country's standing. While at the same time, she has to satisfy American demands. The Trump administration and his officials have repeatedly stated that Delcie must do their bidding or else she will face the same fate as Maduro. She's trying to play for both audiences. As you said, she started off making very aggressive remarks towards America. But just in a matter of days, in a matter of hours, her position has softened. She has issued a statement calling for corporations with the United States, for peaceful coexistence, for working together, for joint business ventures. Just let it sink for you, Natalie.

This is a statement towards the government that has just blown your capital and killed 80 people living in the capital, and you are basically opening your arms to their investments and to bilateral relations.

No, it's totally remarkable. It makes me want to ask you about what this means for the Chavista movement that has been in power now for almost three decades in Venezuela. This is a movement that has staked its legacy on being an anti-American bulwark. What happens to that legacy if Delsy follows through and really does become a willing partner of the Trump administration.

To me, Natalie, the events of the past few days exposed the hollowness of the Nationalist rhetoric behind the Chavizma movement. At the time when the country came into the attack, no one was prepared to defend President Maduro. There was no notable resistance from YAM forces. To me, this peels another layer of mysticism and ideology from the movement. But over the years, over the decades, this movement has gradually lost the pillars of its ideology. First, it lost the populist support, then it lost the socialist credentials. Now, it loses nationalism. What is laugh, Natalie? Survival. Survival is the core aspect of Chavismo movements, and the senior officials who have been at Maduro's side for years and have now closing ranks behind Elsy are focused on survival at any cost.

Atoli, I want to end by just asking how the Venezuelans you're talking to are perceiving all of this, how they're feeling right now. I have to imagine that the many people who voted against Maduro are happy that he's gone on the one hand. And yet the regime that he led is still very much there. And not only that, now there's also this added element of Trump having a potentially very heavy hand in their country. So how is that playing with people?

This is a country that has gotten used to disappointments, that has gotten used to tragedy. In the years that I have lived here, I have experienced time and again a moment of extreme exaltation when it appeared that freedom and democracy were just within grasp. I have witnessed millions of people come out on the streets in popular protest against the government. Every time that hope, that democracy, that freedom was snatched from under their nose. This is a country that has been burned many times and where people have learned to temper their expectations. I think most people in Venezuela, when they watched Elsy being sworn in as the country's interim President, this is not the outcome they would have hoped for. This is not the outcome they would have chosen. This is an outcome that is not just, that is not fair, but is an outcome that just might make their difficult life just a little bit easier.

Well, Anatoly, I hope you get some rest in the coming days, and thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

On Monday, in her first interview since the capture of Maduro, Maria Karina Machado told Fox's Sean Hannity that she hadn't spoken with President Trump since the US deposed the Venezuelan leader. But I do want to say today, on of the Venezuelan people, how grateful we are for his courage- She also thanked Trump for the, quote, courageous actions that led to Maduro's removal.

It's a milestone, and it's not only huge for the Venezuelan people in our future, I think it's a huge step for humanity, for freedom and human dignity.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, Defense Secretary, Pete Hegset, said the military had begun administrative actions against Mark Kelly, the Democratic Senator from Arizona, a move that could end up reducing Kelly's rank and the military pension he receives as a retired Navy captain. The review stems from a video that Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers released in November that reminded service members they were obligated to refuse illegal orders. Hegset called the video seditious and called Kelly reckless for trying to undermine discipline in the ranks. Kelly and his lawyers have argued the Senator was simply articulating a fundamental principle of military law. They've also pointed out that Hegset himself has made similar comments in the past. Today's episode was produced by Olivia Nat, Rob Zipco, Rochelle Banja, and Claire Tennisgetter, with help from Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Paige Cawet and Liz O'Balen. Contains music by Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, and Ron Nemistow, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Isayenne Herrera, Annie Correal, Maria Victoria Fermin, and Adriana Fernandez.

That's it for The Daily.

Natalie Kitrowet. See you tomorrow.