The reason President Trump decided to work with the communist Interim President Delcy Rodriguez was based on an intelligence analysis.
The intelligence analysis, briefed to the President and a tight circle of top advisers, concluded that insiders from Nicolás Maduro’s administration are best positioned to maintain short-term stability following the dictator’s removal by U.S. forces, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
While the report did not explicitly recommend regime change, it analyzed “day-after” scenarios, identifying Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as a primary candidate capable of holding the country together. The assessment suggested that opposition leader María Corina Machado and Edmundo González, who won the 2024 election, would likely face insurmountable resistance from Venezuela’s entrenched military, drug-trafficking networks, and security forces.
“I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader if she doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within the country,” Trump said regarding Machado during a Saturday press conference. “She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”
It became a pragmatic necessity.
Delcy Rodriguez, Ruthless Communist
Delcy Rodriguez is not an improvement over Maduro.
Her father was a student leader of a communist movement. He kidnapped an American businessman and killed him because he was an American.
Rodriguez died in police custody when she was seven years old.
Rodriguez served in various political roles in Hugo Chávez’s government.
After Hugo Chávez’s death, Delcy Rodríguez moved into explicitly political roles and became one of the most influential figures within the executive.
She served in various government roles, and that final role proved particularly consequential. Under her leadership, the Assembly granted itself sweeping, plenipotentiary powers over the other branches of government, ostensibly to draft a new constitution — a process that was never completed.
Maduro once praised her international role, saying she defended Venezuela’s sovereignty and his socialist government “like a tigress”. Announcing her as vice president in 2018, he described her as “brave … revolutionary and tested in a thousand battles”.
María Corina Machado dice @seanhannity: “Delcy Rodríguez es una de las arquirectas de la tortura, corrupción, narcotráfico, es aliada de China, Rusia, Irán. No es un individuo que pueda generar confianza…” pic.twitter.com/REmRSqTGZO
— Emmanuel Rincón (@EmmaRincon) January 6, 2026
