Trump was skeptical of ousting Maduro—until he wasn't

Fed up with repeated efforts to persuade Maduro to leave office, the president decided in favor of military action

- Vera Bergengruen, Juan Forero, Alex Leary & Kejal Vyas

Trump had made it clear he cared more about a bargain from Caracas that served his America First agenda.

(AP)

Six months before he sent U.S. forces to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, President Trump wanted to cut a deal with Maduro, not forcibly remove him from power.

During a July meeting in the Oval Office, Trump told advisers that he wanted to keep negotiating with Maduro’s regime to reach a deal to give priority to U.S. oil companies seeking to pump Venezuelan crude—opting for diplomacy with the autocratic leader.

Trump acknowledged that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had long cautioned him against trusting Maduro and believed oil revenues would bolster his regime, opposed the approach. But Trump, according to people briefed on the discussion, said he wanted a deal: “We're doing it my way.”

In late December, the president decided in favor of military action, fed up with repeated efforts to persuade Maduro to leave office in exchange for amnesty for his alleged crimes. The brazen overnight operation that on Saturday ended with Maduro in a jail in New York offered a test case for a more muscular foreign policy that Trump has signaled he may seek to deploy in other parts of the world, from Colombia to Greenland.

In Trump's second term, Venezuela quickly became an unlikely convergence point for his priorities—mass deportations, drug trafficking, the lure of the country’s vast oil and mineral reserves, and a longstanding push by Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, and other hardliners to depose its brutal regime.

“Venezuela is a perfect storm, it’s everything the Trump administration is concerned about,” said Elliott Abrams, who handled Venezuelan affairs in Trump's first term.