<\/p>\n
\n <\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p><!-- END-BLOCK(acast)[0] --><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"has-underline\">How long will<\/span> the United States claim control over Venezuela? \u201cOnly time will tell,\u201d President Donald Trump told the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/08\/us\/politics\/trump-interview-venezuela.html\">New York Times<\/a> on Wednesday \u2014 potentially years. U.S. troops invaded the country over the weekend, <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/01\/04\/trump-maduro-venezuela-war-media\/\">kidnapping<\/a> President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in New York on Monday. They now sit in a Brooklyn jail, awaiting trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Trump and administration officials have justified ousting Maduro by claiming it was consistent with the Monroe Doctrine \u2014 a doctrine that through the years \u201chas been expanded into something like a universal police warrant that allows the United States to intervene,\u201d says historian <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/staff\/greg-grandin\/\">Greg Grandin<\/a>. \u201cTrump has redefined the Monroe Doctrine to mean, the Monroe is as a weapon that the United States can use in order to protect its interests wherever it wants, whenever it wants. So it\u2019s a substitute for liberal international law.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This week on the Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington discusses the Trump administration\u2019s attack on Venezuela, its larger aims of controlling the Western Hemisphere, and bringing Latin America to heel with Grandin, the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2019\/04\/23\/border-militia-migrants\/\">author<\/a> of numerous <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2019\/01\/16\/one-wall-supersized-extra-racism-hold-the-wars\/\">books<\/a>, including most recently \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/747326\/america-america-by-greg-grandin\/\">America, Am\u00e9rica: A New History of the New World<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s an affiliation between the Monroe Doctrine and American First nationalism,\u201d says Grandin. \u201cThey imagine United States sovereignty expanding well beyond its borders within its hemisphere.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The administration\u2019s vision is outlined in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf\">National Security Strategy<\/a> the White House released in December. \u201cThis is a strategy that announces that the Monroe Doctrine is back in the especially bellicose form. But what\u2019s also interesting, if you read further, the United States is not withdrawing from any of those old regions. \u2026 It\u2019s reserving the right to treat the rest of the world like it treats Latin America.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Trump and administration officials \u2014 from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime advocate for Venezuelan and Cuban regime change, to White House chief of staff Stephen Miller \u2014 have <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/01\/06\/trump-wars-venezuela-colombia-cuba-iran\/\">threatened to expand military operations<\/a> to Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries that don\u2019t fall in line. Maureen Tkacik, investigations editor at The American Prospect, who recently wrote a profile of Rubio headlined \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/2025\/12\/23\/narco-terrorist-elite-rubio-south-america-iran-contra\/\">The Narco-Terrorist Elite<\/a>,\u201d also joins the conversation to discuss the former Florida senator\u2019s history and ambitions.<\/p>\n<p>Tkacik points out that Rubio, a driving force behind Maduro\u2019s ouster, represents a wing of the Republican Party <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/09\/09\/venezuela-boat-oil-trump-latin-america\/\">fixated on battling nominally left leaders in the region<\/a>. That mentality is at odds with a key faction of Trump\u2019s base, who say they\u2019re against foreign intervention because they think the government should keep its attention on U.S. soil.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s attack on Venezuela and fixation on so-called \u201cnarco-terrorists,\u201d Tkacik says, \u201crepresent an attempt to reconcile these two poles \u2014 the Steve Bannon guys and the Marco Rubio neocons \u2014 that really have different definitions of America First.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-intercept-briefing\/id1195206601\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/2js8lwDRiK1TB4rUgiYb24?si=e3ce772344ee4170\">Spotify<\/a>, or wherever you listen.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-transcript\"><strong>Transcript<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Jessica Washington:<\/strong> Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I\u2019m Jessica Washington.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. troops invaded Venezuela on Saturday, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges, and the Venezuelan President now sits in a Brooklyn jail cell, awaiting trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The invasion was preceded by <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/12\/12\/venezuela-boat-strikes-video-press-coverage\/\">months of U.S. military strikes<\/a> on alleged \u201cnarco-terrorist\u201d boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stephen Miller:<\/strong> The United States is using its military to secure our interest unapologetically in our hemisphere. We\u2019re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Marco Rubio:<\/strong> We\u2019ve seen how our adversaries all over the world are exploiting and extracting resources from Africa and every other country. They\u2019re not going to do it in the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Donald Trump:<\/strong> They now call it the Donroe document. I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don\u2019t forget about it anymore. Under our new National Security Strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> While Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, Maduro\u2019s vice president, was sworn in as interim leader after his abduction, President Donald Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/01\/03\/venzuela-war-nicolas-maduro-airstrikes-caracas-trump\/\">says the U.S. is in charge.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Trump and administration officials \u2014 from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime advocate for Venezuelan and Cuban regime change to White House chief of staff Stephen Miller \u2014 have <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/01\/06\/trump-wars-venezuela-colombia-cuba-iran\/\">threatened to expand military operations<\/a> to Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries that don\u2019t fall in line.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the administration has been threatening renewed strikes on Iran and escalating efforts to acquire Greenland. Rubio told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/politics\/national-security\/rubio-tells-lawmakers-trump-aims-to-buy-greenland-downplays-military-action-5c94e05c?utm_social_post_id=644253764&utm_social_handle_id=did%3Aplc%3Ai3fhjvvkbmirhyu4aeihhrnv\">lawmakers<\/a> that Trump wants to buy the island from Denmark, but the administration hasn\u2019t ruled out taking it by force.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So, what\u2019s to make of the Trump administration\u2019s aggressive foreign policy ambitions?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Joining me now to break all of this down is historian and professor at Yale, <a href=\"https:\/\/greggrandin.com\/\">Greg Grandin<\/a><em>. <\/em>He\u2019s the author of numerous books, including most recently \u201cAmerica, Am\u00e9rica: A New History of the New World.\u201d Also joining us is <a href=\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/author\/maureen-tkacik\/\">Maureen Tkacik<\/a>, investigations editor at the American Prospect, who recently wrote a profile of Rubio headlined, \u201cThe Narco-Terrorist Elite.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Greg and Maureen, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Greg Grandin:<\/strong> Thanks for having us.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Maureen Tkacik:<\/strong> Thank you so much.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> To start, Maureen, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, Maduro\u2019s vice president, was sworn in as interim leader after his abduction, but Trump says the U.S. is in charge \u2014 exactly who is, is unclear at the moment. But what does it mean to govern Venezuela right now?<\/p>\n<p><strong>MT:<\/strong> To govern Venezuela is a task that\u2019s difficult to comprehend. We are talking about a country that has experienced the equivalent of three Great Depressions in the past decade. A lot of that was oil prices and a lot more of that is the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/08\/02\/venezuela-election-maduro-us-sanctions-democracy\/\">draconian sanctions<\/a> that successive administrations \u2014 especially the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2019\/01\/30\/donald-trump-and-the-yankee-plot-to-overthrow-the-venezuelan-government\/\">Trump administration <\/a>\u2014 imposed that effectively criminalized commerce when it comes to dealing with that country.<\/p>\n<p>When he was still in charge, Maduro was very open to doing whatever we wanted him to do to lift those sanctions to get a little bit of relief, because a little bit of relief could start to mend the state. But what is the terrifying prospect is that \u2014 if the Chavistas are completely overthrown \u2014 really relies on a competent government\u00a0with some ability to enforce the rule of law and to when they have enough money, get basic needs out to the populace. I don\u2019t think that it\u2019s easy at all, but the Chavista government has <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2017\/08\/12\/the-battle-for-venezuela-and-its-oil\/\">done that hard work for several decades <\/a>now, despite meager and meager resources with which to do it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And I think that somebody in the Trump administration \u2014 there\u2019s been a lot of press about how Trump was put off by [Maria Corina] Machado accepting the Nobel Prize and not just getting up there and saying, \u201cThis really belongs to that peacemaker, Donald J. Trump.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>What I have heard is that Marco Rubio has an unusually \u2014 for this era of Republican affairs \u2014 unusually competent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/11\/15\/the-man-in-rubios-ear-00653051\">chief of staff<\/a>, I think formerly of [think tank] American Compass. And this gentleman is apparently behind the scenes saying, \u201cShe ain\u2019t it. This opposition ain\u2019t it. There\u2019s so much infighting just among them. We can take out Maduro, we can get that sort of public relations coup, but really what we should do is take the deal that Maduro offered, which is, whatever you want.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><strong>GG:<\/strong> One question that I did have was, who in the Trump administration was smart enough to know that Machado was a non-starter?<\/p>\n<p><strong>MT:<\/strong> Michael Needham.<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG:<\/strong> Michael Needham [laughs]. Because if one of the ways you look at this is that Marco Rubio as the head of the war party, Hegseth, and JD Vance and Miller and the head of the DEA, and they\u2019re all eager to go in, and they want to kneecap the people who want to negotiate a normalized relationship like Richard Grenell. If they started this war, and obviously, they started this military buildup, and obviously the end goal isn\u2019t just Venezuela \u2014 it\u2019s Cuba. Then Greater Miami and Greater Florida must be feeling enormously betrayed about Machado and her being cut out, because they see it as, this is the first step to bringing down Cuba.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So I was wondering how they got Marco Rubio on board for this particular arrangement, which seems to contradict that other idea, that we\u2019ll put the hard-liners in and then we\u2019ll move on to Cuba. But it makes sense, if they just felt that they were so incompetent and so much infighting. And there\u2019s no reason why they can\u2019t eventually bring pressure to bear on Cuba. <\/p>\n<p>I haven\u2019t heard if there\u2019s been any directives issued from the metropole \u2014 from Washington \u2014 about how Venezuela should be treating Cuba. But I imagine they\u2019ll be coming soon. You know that Cuban security agents have to leave. Cuban doctors will have to leave, and no more oil for Cuba. I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s happened. I\u2019m just saying I imagine that is on the agenda soon.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> What you\u2019ve picked up on, too, about Cuba is taking me into my next question, which is about the \u201cDonroe Doctrine,\u201d as Trump has renamed it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG: <\/strong>We can\u2019t call it that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>[Laughter.]<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW: <\/strong>OK, I\u2019ll just call it the Monroe Doctrine. But Greg, I want to get into it because Trump has justified ousting the Venezuelan president by invoking the Monroe Doctrine, and I think it\u2019d be helpful to just get a little bit of background for our listeners. What is the Monroe Doctrine, and why are we invoking it here? Why is Trump invoking it here?<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG:<\/strong> First of all, the United States is the only country that has doctrines. The Monroe Doctrine is four paragraphs in a 1823 State of the Union address that James Monroe gave, basically acknowledging the inevitability of Spanish American independence. The four paragraphs \u2014 vaguely worded \u2014 they\u2019re hesitant. They weren\u2019t sure really how to proceed. They didn\u2019t want to commit one way or the other. They said they recognized that Spanish American independence was inevitable. They warned Europe about trying to reconquer any parts of Spanish America that have been declared free. They said the United States shares special interests with all of the Western Hemisphere. They didn\u2019t define what those interests were.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And there\u2019s a brief sentence in there about how the United States would interpret events anywhere else in the hemisphere on how they bear on the peace and happiness of the United States. Now it\u2019s that last clause that has been expanded into something like a universal police warrant that allows the United States to intervene. It\u2019s a standing open warrant that it could use wherever it wants against whoever it wants. Not at first! It took a while before Monroe\u2019s statement was elevated to the level of doctrine. Then it was fortified. <\/p>\n<p>Other presidents added corollaries; Grover Cleveland basically said the U.S. sovereignty was law across the whole hemisphere because it was powerful. Theodore Roosevelt said that the United States had policing power to put down chronic disorder, that was in 1905. But the Monroe Doctrine fell out of use with FDR and the Good Neighbor Policy, and even during the Cold War, when the United States started ramping up interventions again, particularly after the Cuban Revolution. They didn\u2019t so much reference the Monroe Doctrine with all its association of gunboat diplomacy, and taking Texas, and taking Mexico, and taking Panama, and old styled imperialism. Reagan had his own doctrine. Nixon had his own doctrine. They didn\u2019t necessarily invoke Monroe. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>What\u2019s important to know is that American First nationalism likes the Monroe Doctrine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>But what\u2019s important to know is that American First nationalism likes the Monroe Doctrine. There\u2019s an affiliation between the Monroe Doctrine and American First nationalism. First of all, American first nationalists are not isolationists, they\u2019re internationalists. They\u2019re just not universalists. They\u2019re tribal nationalists, and they believe in expansion within the hemisphere. They understand that the United States has the right to project its power, and they imagine United States sovereignty expanding well beyond its borders within its hemisphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And they liked the Monroe Doctrine \u2014 people like Stephen Miller and these people \u2014 because the Monroe Doctrine is pre-modern. It\u2019s before the United Nations. It\u2019s before universal suffrage. It\u2019s before abolition. It\u2019s before mass migration and doctrines like human rights. It\u2019s before the foundation of the Organization of American States. It\u2019s almost like a heritage \u2014 they talk about \u201cheritage America\u201d \u2014 the Monroe Doctrine is something very dear to the hearts of the kind of America First nationalism that Trump represents. <\/p>\n<p>So their use of it now, their rehabilitation of it now \u2014 and I must say in the most bellicose way yet. We complain about Teddy Roosevelt. We complain about Grover Cleveland. But even in the past, even when it was justifying all sorts of interventions, the assumption was that the United States was doing it on behalf of the Western Hemisphere to keep enemies out, whether it be Communist or whatever.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-right\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe Monroe Doctrine is particularist, it\u2019s tribal, it\u2019s specific to the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Trump has redefined the Monroe Doctrine to mean, the Monroe is as a weapon that the United States can use in order to protect its interests wherever it wants, whenever it wants. So it\u2019s a substitute for liberal international law. And to the degree that liberal international law was nominally, even formally, if not in actuality universalist, the Monroe Doctrine is particularist, it\u2019s tribal, it\u2019s specific to the United States and its relationship to what the United States imagines as its backyard, its sphere of influence \u2014 and that\u2019s Latin America. So this rehabilitation of the Monroe Doctrine, I think, goes very nicely and seamlessly with the vision of world politics and global politics that Donald Trump imagines he\u2019s presiding over or implementing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> And the Monroe Doctrine is a part of the administration\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf\">national security strategy<\/a>, which was released in December, which includes a section titled \u201cWestern Hemisphere: The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.\u201d So this feels really relevant right now. And Greg, I want to also touch on something else that you\u2019ve obviously touched on quite frequently in your work.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve referred to Venezuela as \u201cempire\u2019s laboratory,\u201d a testing ground where the U.S. works out its own problems in someone else\u2019s sovereign nation. Can you tell us more about the history of this dynamic and what it says about the Trump administration that they\u2019re reaching for it now?<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG:<\/strong> Yeah, well not so much Venezuela \u2014 all of Latin America. All of Latin America is empire\u2019s workshop. It\u2019s a place where the United States right from the beginning, where banking houses first went international, where companies first had their first overseas offices, where shipping companies, Grace Company, companies that later became Halliburton first set up overseas shop. <\/p>\n<p>Mexico after the Civil War was the first time that capitalists in New York and Boston got together and presided over a process of nation building to basically turn Mexico into an export oriented state; took over its mining and its agriculture, its railroads, its electricity, its trolleys. Mexico was basically the United States\u2019 first exercise in capitalist state building. Latin America is a place where the United States would work out strategies of repression. And that was particularly during the Cold War. And there was a lot of cooperation between U.S. police and U.S. military and Latin American military.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cMexico was basically the United States\u2019 first exercise in capitalist state building. Latin America is a place where the United States would work out strategies of repression.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p>But one of the points that I make in the book \u2014 it\u2019s just not all of these repressive things. Latin America is also the place in which the United States, where aspiring coalitions emerging out of the ruins of the last coalition that overreached turn to Latin America to work out new ways of thinking about the world.<\/p>\n<p>So Franklin Delano Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal was absolutely dependent on having access to Latin America. It was working with economic nationalists, cooperating with reformers, tolerating all sorts of things, including nationalization of U.S. property. Basically giving up the right of intervention and recognizing the sovereignty of Latin American nations that created a decade of goodwill that solidified and gave ballast to the New Deal at home also and readied the United States for World War II.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And then of course, when the New Deal begins to unravel in the 1970s, it\u2019s the new right that returns to Latin America and works out new strategies for how to administer things. Where maybe the New Deal was the moral vision of citizenship with some form of social democracy. The new right brought back the idea of individual rights and individual freedoms and a very muscular anti-communist liberalism that it then uses. That is its framework for thinking about foreign policy as a whole. <\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s a workshop, not just in the material instruments of repression or the grasping means of accumulation of wealth. It\u2019s also a place in which the United States forms ideas about how the world works and the role of the United States in it.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cSo it\u2019s a workshop \u2026 a place in which the United States forms ideas about how the world works and the role of the United States in it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> No, that\u2019s really interesting analysis, and I\u2019m going to dive back into Rubio of this whole situation in a second. But first I want to look a little bit more globally.<\/p>\n<p>In December, Greg, you wrote for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/12\/15\/opinion\/monroe-doctrine-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share\">New York Times<\/a>, \u201cIn place of the now defunct liberal international order, the White House is implicitly globalizing the Monroe Doctrine, claiming for the United States the right to unilaterally respond to perceived threats not just within its hemisphere but anywhere on Earth (China excluded).\u201d Can you say a bit more? How are the Trump administration\u2019s expansive foreign policy aims taking shape? The implications seem somewhat obvious, but I\u2019d like you to spell them out for us.<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG:<\/strong> Yeah, if you read that document and you listen to the ideologues of America First nationalism, there\u2019s a clear rejection of the post-Cold War bipartisan consensus and that the United States would superintend a liberal capitalist order \u2014 with shared rules concerning property rights and trade and what not \u2014 and treat the world as a single unity. Trump\u2019s vision is a return to a kind of pre-World War II balance of power in which individual hegemons would be in charge of getting their hinterlands in order.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s more of a fractured sovereignty. You have China and its greater realm in the South China Sea. You have Russia and the former Soviet Republics and Ukraine, and you have the United States and Latin America, and this is very explicitly laid out in the national security strategy, and this is a strategy that announces that the Monroe Doctrine is back in the especially bellicose form.<\/p>\n<p>But what\u2019s also interesting, if you read further, the United States is not withdrawing from any of those old regions. It\u2019s not like it\u2019s going to let every hegemon play in its own sandbox. It still understands the world as a world of competition and especially against China. And it\u2019s reserving the right to treat the rest of the world kind of like it treats Latin America.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There is an implicit globalization of the Monroe Doctrine. It\u2019s talking about influencing politics in Europe. It\u2019s talking about continuing to protect Taiwan if it has to. It\u2019s a little unclear. It\u2019s a little all over the place that there are certain contradictions within the document. But yes, it\u2019s a fascinating document, and I think it\u2019s a very precarious document. I mean, why shouldn\u2019t Putin say, \u201cWell, look what the United States did in Venezuela? We just want to get Ukraine in order.\u201d Why shouldn\u2019t Beijing say, \u201cWe just want to get Taiwan in order. These are our hinterlands.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWhy shouldn\u2019t Putin say, \u2018Well, look what the United States did in Venezuela? We just want to get Ukraine in order.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p><strong>MT:<\/strong> I wanted to add that, having looked a lot at the Tren de Aragua phenomenon, there is a real schism between the neocons and the MAGA America First people.<\/p>\n<p>Stephen Miller anticipated this throughout the Biden administration, and you can see their obsession building with Tren de Aragua starting in 2023. This was a project.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So we had this <a href=\"https:\/\/coloradonewsline.com\/2024\/09\/04\/disputing-claims-of-gang-takeover-aurora-tenants-protest-slumlord-owner\/\">slumlord <\/a>in Aurora, Colorado. He hadn\u2019t taken care of his buildings. And some Venezuelan immigrants happened to have taken up residents there. And some of these people were bad guys. There are a few of these buildings that were really getting taken over. But these slumlords, they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.9news.com\/article\/news\/local\/local-politics\/conservative-leaders-claim-without-evidence-venezuelan-gangsters-control-parts-aurora\/73-12ff2368-0a43-4bf8-8615-0ba06890aabe\">hire a PR firm<\/a> in Boca Raton, Florida. And these guys put together a pitch saying, this vicious gang Tren de Aragua \u2014 which at this point no one has ever heard of, this is back in 2024 \u2014 has taken over buildings, we are being invaded by these scary Venezuelan gangs. To make the case that cities were shoving the Tren de Aragua epidemic under the rug, that woke city officials, the woke Republican mayor of Aurora, Colorado, were gaslighting the public about the horrors being inflicted by this Venezuelan prison gang that nobody had heard of.<\/p>\n<p>This Venezuela, the Tren de Aragua thing, and this Venezuela operation, I think, do represent an attempt to reconcile these two poles \u2014 the Steve Bannon guys and the Marco Rubio neocons \u2014 that really have different definitions of America First.<\/p>\n<p>Rubio, of course, comes from this \u2014\u00a0this is what <a href=\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/2025\/12\/23\/narco-terrorist-elite-rubio-south-america-iran-contra\/\">my story<\/a> that you invited me on to talk about explains \u2014 that Rubio is so much a product of this milieu of hard-right-wing Cuban immigrants. His brother-in-law, who was a mentor to him, an idol to him as a teenager \u2014 he was a drug trafficker for an organization, and he was arrested and imprisoned in the late \u201980s. But for an organization that was run by a bunch of Bay of Pigs veterans. I really couldn\u2019t believe, wow, Bay of Pigs veterans, wouldn\u2019t you know, they really controlled the entire drug trade in Latin America starting in the \u201970s, they controlled cocaine. And as a result, they controlled every sort of either right-wing government, or had their tentacles in every right-wing government in Latin America and every right-wing paramilitary organization in Latin America. And they were working with the CIA on behalf of the CIA.<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG: <\/strong>And it is true that after the Cuban Revolution, right-wing Cubans or anti-communist Cubans were brought into the conservative coalition. They\u2019re involved in this drug-running. They were involved in Watergate. So the incorporation of anti-communist Cubans into the right-wing coalition has been a key element within the rise of the new right.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And in terms of the drugs: John Stockwell was a CIA agent, and he turned into a kind of informant to the public. He said there\u2019s not one major operation that the CIA has mounted where it didn\u2019t leave behind a major drug cartel operation. And starting with Italy in 1947 and running to Latin America through the 1980s. Latin America, the CIA is all over the expanse of drug running, through Pinochet, through these repressive right-wing governments that the CIA installed in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s. And then once they\u2019re in power, then they start taking money from the DEA to <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/11\/12\/collateral-damage-episode-six-airborne-imperalism\/\">eradicate the drugs that they themselves are involved in facilitating and cultivating<\/a>. It\u2019s crazy-making.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> The aftermath is often incredibly destructive of anything the United States does when playing in Latin America. Playing is maybe not the best word here. We\u2019re talking about ousting a president, but I want to dive into some reporting. Reporting has suggested that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was the one of the driving forces behind the ousting of Maduro.<\/p>\n<p>He represents a wing of the Republican Party that remains fixated on battling these nominally left leaders. And has Marco Rubio essentially become the dog that caught the car here? Do we think this has gone beyond what he planned for or is he exactly where he wants to be?<\/p>\n<p><strong>MT:<\/strong> I think that Marco Rubio is eyeing a presidential run. And I think that his brain \u2014 this gentleman Michael Needham, who people who aren\u2019t ideologically affiliated with the neocons are very impressed with \u2014 I think that he said, this would be bad. It would be bad to install. So we\u2019re in this interesting period where it\u2019s not clear what\u2019s going to happen.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW: <\/strong>Greg, I want to get your thoughts. Marco Rubio, along with Stephen Miller, is apparently now running the country. Do you think he got exactly what he wanted, or is this way more than he could have ever anticipated?<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG:<\/strong> This goes back to the earlier point: Who came up with the idea of cutting out Machado? Operating on the assumption that Rubio would\u2019ve wanted Machado in because it\u2019s part of the whole, anti-Castro, anti-Communist, anti-Cuban line with much more hard-line, much more ideological. If Venezuela really is a step to taking out Cuba, you would\u2019ve imagined that Rubio would\u2019ve wanted Machado. So Machado must\u2019ve been pretty bad for them to reject it. <\/p>\n<p>So the question is, is Rubio playing a long game? He still has Cuba in his sights, but he just thinks it\u2019s going to take a little bit more time until they can get Venezuela in a place where they want. If Machado was installed, maybe they could have just leapfrogged straight to Cuba and went after Cuba. Now it\u2019s going to take a little bit more time.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, Rubio, he has his foot in both camps. He\u2019s not a natural America Firster. He is a neocon. In the Senate, he was very much associated with the neoconservative interventionist, and he supported the Iraq war. He supported the war on terror. He certainly wants to go into Iran. <\/p>\n<p>So he is, in some ways, Trump\u2019s liaison to the neoconservatives, and now he\u2019s caught himself in this weird position where he is not the fish nor fowl. He\u2019s presided over a regime change that may have satisfied the American Firsters in its restraint \u2014 in the sense that it\u2019s not going in with boots on the ground and spending millions of dollars on rebuilding Venezuela. But he\u2019s not satisfying the neocons. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/international\/2026\/01\/trumps-critics-should-not-go-wobbly-over-venezuela\/685487\/\">David Frum<\/a> had an article in The Atlantic basically praising and saying, even Trump gets things right. So Rubio kind of operates on both of these sides on this foreign policy divide.<\/p>\n<p><strong>MT:<\/strong> Yeah, Rubio is just a dye-in-the-wool neocon. <a href=\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/2025\/11\/26\/30-billion-dollar-identity-theft-of-venezuela\/\">One thing in writing about Citgo<\/a>, I would look at FOIA requests filed with USAID because USAID spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade funding Venezuelan opposition and sabotage missions and what-have-you.<\/p>\n<p>And Marco Rubio as the head of the National Archives, that\u2019s his like fourth job, I think he controls those records. I started calling up some people who\u2019d been filing these FOIA requests because I wasn\u2019t really sure how I should do one, who I should make it out to these days. And I came across a lot of right-wing Venezuelans who have very little regard for [Juan] Guaid\u00f3, for Maria Corina [Machado], for Leopoldo L\u00f3pez \u2014 a lot of fairly right-wing or some of them are hard right, I had one of them tell me that Maria Corina was actually a socialist.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG: <\/strong>[Laughs.]<\/p>\n<p><strong>MT: <\/strong>But ideology aside, they all will tell you that these people are just grifter, like they\u2019re just as corrupt as Maduro. There\u2019s a lot of variation in the Venezuelan opposition. It could be that there are other members of the Venezuelan opposition that are trying to pull the strings.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019ve been doing a lot of really bad stuff in Venezuela, and that is why they are not popular, especially Maria Corina. She has, again, <a href=\"https:\/\/geopoliticaleconomy.com\/2025\/10\/13\/maria-corina-machado-israel-genocide-trump-war-venezuela\/#:~:text=The%202018%20open%20letter%20in,condemned%20Israel%20for%20committing%20genocide.\">asking Netanyahu to invade her country<\/a>. So that\u2019s another thing. If the Trump administration could get to the point where they put a moratorium on some of these sabotage efforts and get some of the sanctions lifted, they could have a win-win situation. But most of the Trump administration has been lose-loses.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!-- BLOCK(newsletter)[0](%7B%22componentName%22%3A%22NEWSLETTER%22%2C%22entityType%22%3A%22SHORTCODE%22%2C%22optional%22%3Atrue%7D)(%7B%7D) --><\/p>\n<div class=\"newsletter-embed flex-col items-center print:hidden\" id=\"third-party--article-mid\" data-module=\"InlineNewsletter\" data-module-source=\"web_intercept_20241230_Inline_Signup_Replacement\">\n<div class=\"-mx-5 sm:-mx-10 p-5 sm:px-10 xl:-ml-5 lg:mr-0 xl:px-5 bg-accentLight hidden\" data-name=\"subscribed\">\n<h2 class=\"font-sans font-light uppercase text-[30px] leading-8 text-white tracking-[0.01em] mb-0\">\n We\u2019re independent of corporate interests \u2014 and powered by members. 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Delivered to you. <\/span><br \/>\n <span class=\"group-[.default]:hidden\"><br \/>\n Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept? <\/span>\n <\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/join.theintercept.com\/donate\/now\/?referrer_post_id=507221&referrer_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com%2F2026%2F01%2F09%2Ftrump-venezuela-maduro-greg-grandin%2F&source=web_intercept_20241230_Inline_Signup_Replacement\" class=\"group-[.default]:hidden border border-accentLight text-accentLight font-sans px-5 py-3.5 inline-flex items-center gap-3 text-[20px] font-bold\" data-action=\"handleDonate\"><br \/>\n Become a member <span class=\"font-icons icon-TI_Arrow_02_Right\"\/><br \/>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"font-sans text-accentLight text-[10px] leading-[13px] text-balance [&_a]:text-accentLight [&_a]:font-bold [&_a:hover]:underline group-[.subscribed]:hidden\">\n<p>By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/privacy-policy\/\">Privacy Policy<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/terms-use\/\">Terms of Use<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- END-BLOCK(newsletter)[0] --><\/p>\n<p><strong>[Break]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JW: <\/strong>Greg, I want to pivot to you. The Trump administration\u2019s attempts to destabilize Venezuela look essentially like the latest chapter in U.S. antagonism towards what\u2019s known as the pink-tide nations \u2014 Latin American countries that elected left-leaning governments explicitly opposed to U.S. hegemony. Maduro certainly opposed the U.S., but did he govern like a leftist? How much of this is a left\/right issue? What else is going on here?<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG: <\/strong>Maduro was a special case in the way that Venezuela gradually became a crisis and then a problem to be solved.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He obviously comes out of the left. He was, I think, a bus driver. He was a community organizer and he worked his way up the Chavista social movements and into the Chavista government. He undoubtedly comes out of the left. The question is to what degree once he became president, once oil prices fell, once the sanctions hit, once he found himself boxed into a corner, what actions did he take to stay in power, is another question. But it did have the effect of splitting, in many ways, the left in Latin America.<\/p>\n<p>When you have somebody like Maduro, it doesn\u2019t matter, the actual facts that Maureen were talking about \u2014 it\u2019s the perception. So you have Lula, and Boric in Chile, and Petro in Columbia; they have to take a stand. Is Maduro somebody we\u2019re going to defend? Is Maduro somebody we\u2019re going to argue didn\u2019t steal the <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/08\/02\/venezuela-election-maduro-us-sanctions-democracy\/\">2024 elections<\/a>? And Maduro somebody we\u2019re going to go to the mat for? And so it creates divisionism within Latin America to a large degree. So it weakens things.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What I\u2019m most distressed about is, polling shows in countries like Chile and Columbia, a high degree of support for the removal of Maduro. And that is different in Latin America. Because as I said, Latin America is the place where the ideal of national sovereignty was first made real, where the ideal of non-interference and non-intervention was forced on the United States. When Bush Sr. <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2021\/04\/27\/biden-panama-manuel-noriega\/\">took action against Manuel Noriega<\/a>, every country in the [Organization of American States] opposed \u2014 every one of them. It was seen as a violation of sovereignty, period. No matter how ill-reputed Manuel Noriega was. And to see that commitment to sovereignty and non-intervention weakening in the face of this ongoing assault and orchestrated campaign against Venezuela is a bit troubling.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But without doubt, we talked about Venezuela being the first step toward Cuba, but it\u2019s not going to end there. Obviously, the two big prizes is Brazil and Mexico. These are countries that have solid left governments, Mexico more secure than the Brazilian one. But though maybe not, considering the way that they handled the coup plotters in Brazil. <\/p>\n<p>But there is no getting Latin America in order, back under the eagle\u2019s wing, without Brazil and Mexico, the two largest economies, the two largest populations \u2014 and they\u2019re also the countries that have the most coherent left-wing governments that still understand itself as anti-neoliberal, as committed to sovereignty, as committed to non-intervention.<\/p>\n<p>Claudia Sheinbaum speaks cautiously and quietly, but forcefully also about defending the ideal of sovereignty. And Lula spends, as we know, a lot of time trying to organize different pieces of the world to find alternatives to the United States in terms of trade and credit, either through the BRICS or through something else. And those are the countries ultimately that\u2019ll be targeted. The U.S. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/05\/29\/world\/americas\/trump-brazil-judge-censorship.html\">tried to target Brazil over its social media prohibitions<\/a>. Brazil regulated social media and tried to get some of the hate speech off of it. And it drew a sharp reaction against the United States, including sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>Elon Musk was very upset and Rumble was very upset, but Brazil won that fight. And it also <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/series\/secret-brazil-archive\/\">won the fight against the coup plotters<\/a> \u2014 the people that tried to prevent Lula from coming to power in jail. So I think there\u2019s some basis of hope in Brazil and in Mexico. But without doubt to get Latin America in order would entail bringing those countries to heel, or at least keeping them on their hind legs, and worried about U.S. intervention and U.S. interference.<\/p>\n<p>Latin America people are tired of crime and they\u2019re tired of the corruption that comes with the drug industry. And the right has also imported a lot of cultural politics \u2014 cultural warfare politics \u2014 into Latin America in order to confront the left. Coming out of the Cold War, the left was dominant rhetorically and electorally, when Chavez and Lula and Kirchner, and Morales was in power in Bolivia, and the right lost almost every election. It was a kind of partition Cold War anti-communist right. But since they\u2019ve managed to <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/03\/02\/trump-latin-america-new-right\/\">restyle themselves in the format of Trump <\/a>\u2014 in all of Trump\u2019s pet issues \u2014they\u2019ve managed to gain electoral traction.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s clear what the United States wants in Latin America. It wants a <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2025\/05\/09\/trump-bukele-kilmar-abrego-garcia-el-salvador-cecot-prison\/\">giant prison camp<\/a>, \u00e0 la Bukele. And he wants to escalate the drug war into a crusade. It wants everybody back on board. There\u2019s resistance to that. <\/p>\n<p>And of course it wants to kick out China. China is the big thing, but China\u2019s investment is so integrated within Latin America, I don\u2019t see what the Trump administration, short of offering viable alternatives in terms of competing with China economically, can do to extract Latin America from China. I think that boat has sailed. And China has an influence in Latin America, although it acts very cautiously. It didn\u2019t speak up about Venezuela, and it kept quiet and it plays its cards to its chest. China\u2019s always playing a long game.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW: <\/strong>Yeah, you just mentioned a lot of really catastrophic scenarios.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>[Laughter]<\/p>\n<p>So this next question may seem a little confusing after all of that, but what is the most hopeful outcome that could possibly come out of all of this?<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG:<\/strong> In Venezuela, I don\u2019t know the dynamics. Things are happening so fast, I really don\u2019t understand who\u2019s doing what or what\u2019s going on. I know there\u2019s schisms within Venezuela. But if to some degree there could be a democratic renewal within the social base of Chavismo, those democratic organizations that made Chavismo a vibrant movement in the early 2000s as something to celebrate. Whether it be community radio, whether it be the cooperatives, whether it be the communal councils, if there can be a democratic renovation of the social base of Chavismo \u2014 which I think has been to a degree decimated and diluted by Maduro, for whatever reasons. He was under siege by the greatest, strongest, and most powerful country in world history. Lord knows what steps you have to take in order to survive.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If there could be a democratic renewal that wasn\u2019t an oligarchic restoration, that kept some of the premises and principles of the Chavista Revolution \u2014 that oil belongs to the people, that the revenue should be spent on social funds, that health care should be provided to the poor, that housing should be provided [to] the poor. I think a lot of expectations were raised under [Hugo] Chavez and many of them were fulfilled, even if they unraveled under Maduro. If we can get back to that, I think that would be the most hopeful scenario that I can imagine.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW:<\/strong> Well, we\u2019re going to leave it there, but thank you for taking the time to speak to us on the Intercept Briefing. We really enjoyed having you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>GG:<\/strong> Thank you so much, Jessica. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun talking.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JW: <\/strong>That does it for this episode.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Desiree Adib is our booking producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.<\/p>\n<p>Slip Stream provided our theme music.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to support our work, you can go to <a href=\"https:\/\/join.theintercept.com\/donate\/Donate_Podcast?source=interceptedshoutout&recurring_period=one-time\">theintercept.com\/join<\/a>. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven\u2019t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. And leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to send us a message, email us at <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2026\/01\/09\/trump-venezuela-maduro-greg-grandin\/mailto:podcasts@theintercept.com\">podcasts@theintercept.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Until next time, I\u2019m Jessica Washington.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>#Greg #Grandin #Trumps #Universal #Police #Warrant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How long will the United State… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[246],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}