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MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, but that regime is still in place--
SECRETARY RUBIO: --also having an impact on us, that is what we are addressing now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: When you spoke yesterday--
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, again that- but we're not just addressing the regime. We are addressing the factors that are a threat to the national interest of the United States.
The chattering class have been energized with the 3 January action by the United States to extract Nicholas Maduro and his wife from Venezuela to face a variety of criminal indictments in the United States. They are right t do so. NPR, in writing produced by its "International Desk," quoted Latin American leaders to which the writers appeared to value (Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, Brazil, etc. none of whom have "warm" relations with the U.S.) spun the story in a way that appeared to invite a sense that the action was yet another barbarity perpetrated on the world by a lawless American regime. There was also an obsession with the "legality" of the attack under "international" law, one supposedly to which the U.S. is bound, though inviting those engaging in that conversation a chance to try to model discourse in favor of interpretations that align with what might be taken to be their politics (eg Politico Roundup).. All of this is fair, of course. And international law such as it is, has become the favor fetish to be invoked by anyone handy with the terminology to produce a maledetta against their political/ideological enemies. Banal stuff, but the bread and butter of the ideological proletariat as they go about their business of laboring for the construction of thought palaces for those who will live comfortably within them. The opposite, of course, was also try, with reporting that somehow suggested the inverse of that reporting. And there were prognostications-a-go-go, mostly using simple analogy to project outward what the prognosticator assumed was a core "learning" to one or another favorite "hot" spot. Al Jazeera, interestingly enough provided a most useful reporting with a minimum of editorializing (though it, too, like NPR could not resist the editorial power of Quotation marks when using the word "capture").
In a move that stunned the world, the United States bombed Venezuela and toppled President Nicolas Maduro amid condemnation and plaudits. In a news conference on Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, President Donald Trump praised the operation to seize Maduro as one of the “most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history”. * * *During his news conference on Saturday, Trump announced that the US would “run” the country until a new leader was chosen. “We’re going to make sure that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain,” he said. “This is a very dangerous attack. This is an attack that could have gone very, very badly.” The president did not rule out deploying US troops in the country and said he was “not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to”. Trump also, somewhat surprisingly, ruled out working with opposition figure and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who had dedicated her prize, which he so wanted to win himself, to the US president.“She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country,” he said. The Constitutional Chamber of Venezuela’s Supreme Court ordered Vice President Delcy Rodriguez to serve as acting president following the US’s abduction of Maduro. The court ruled that Rodriguez will assume “the office of President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in order to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defence of the Nation”. The court also said it would work to “determine the applicable legal framework to guarantee the continuity of the State, the administration of government, and the defense of sovereignty in the face of the forced absence of the President of the Republic”. Trump had said earlier on Saturday that the US would not occupy Venezuela, provided Rodriguez “does what we want”. (How the US attack on Venezuela, abduction of Maduro unfolded).
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And of course this is just the beginning. All of this is very interesting to many. The geo-politics of the attack and the sequestration of Mr & Mrs. Maduro will have ramifications. The war against quasi state transnational criminal elements sometimes deeply tied to and sometimes merged with elements of a State apparatus, will continue to fascinate, its instrumentalization and ideological transformation will certainly be a sight to behold.
But none of this is the object of this short reflection. Instead the focus here is on the fundamental orienting lens that provides the conceptual framework within which the U.S. action can be "seen" and "understood" and on that basis "valued" and "assessed" (everyone it seems is using quotes these days, a malady of the 2nd quarter of the 21st century it seems). That is to say, what is now plain to see is that the cognitive starting points of the present Administration and those of its predecessors are no so divergent that it is no longer possible to assess action across these cognitive structures. What becomes even clearer is that a consequence of both the extent and trajectories of this divergence is that general assessment is no longer possible except by reference to one or the other system of measurement. There may be as much incoherence between a liberal democratic world view as there is between the old order worldview and what is emerging in the 2nd Trump Administration and coalescing in AmericaFirst.
Indeed, the U.S. action has made unavoidably visible a confrontation between the old and emerging cognitive cages. The old cognitive cage produced a certain orthodoxy of thought, grounded on a mandatory set of premises about the organization of the world and used to build and apply the institutions and expectations that marked the word from the aftermath of the second phase of European disintegration in 1945 until the start of its 3rd phase with the invasion of Crimea 100 years after the start of the wars of European disintegration in 1914. It was a world crafted by and for vanguardist techno-bureaucrats, the fundamental organizing principle of which was (and marked the triumph) of Leninism as a global baseline ideological framework. Certainly there was "left" Leninism in the form of the variations of Marxist-Leninist political systems, but there was "right" Leninism as well in the rise of the techno-bureaucratic managerialism that marked both the construction of deeply penetrative public institutions in the political arena and as deeply embedded and reflective a set of techno-bureaucracies in the large enterprises that dominated, institutionally and culturally certainty, the world of "private" and mostly but bit entirely economic activity. To this was added the Leninist marginalia of techno-religious institutional frameworks (Iran is an exemplar but not the only one). Leninism requires an ideology around which to may may function and organize human collective--but it has never been particularly fussy, at least in the 20th and early 21st century, about which ideology suits it best. . . .they all do. This produces the architecture of officials merging public and private power--mangers in and through the public sphere, and the need for orderly managerialism as apolitical organizing principle through the structures of regulatory organs that may be contextually different but which share the same set of cognitive order defining premises. In this case, and drawing fro the historical eras from which they emerged, these forms of Leninism centered on the State as the vessel through which vanguards might effectively organize the world through a variety of categories and categorical binaries that in the cultivation of cultures of difference provided the fracture necessary to manage collective space against chaos and for stability aligned with th4e attainment of whatever goal the ruling ideology suggested--it is a rules based multilateral ordering bounded in territorial states and dedicated to the proposition that effective political regulation by an expert bureaucratic class of public officials can produce the necessary to create the stability necessary to aid the vanguard in achieving its legitimizing goals.
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This discussion is neither an invitation to love or hate or be indifferent to either of the cognitive structures within which it is possible to elaborate a reality within which it is possible to organize collective life "naturally". But it is an invitation to consider the effects of perspective lenses that these cognitive cages produce and the way they can result in quite different perception (and assessments) of any action, condition, or "fact."
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The transcript follows below. It is fascinating both for its illustration of the vocabulary and analytical lens of America First in the 2nd Administration of President Trump, and or the way that this lens is effectively incomprehensible to those who adhere to the cognitive vessel of the now receding conceptual order. No value judgments here--my purpose here is not to serve as a cheerleader for either position, but merely to consider both as they confront each other using a common vocabulary masking the gap between world views. I will suggest here some of the points of divergence:
1. Territory.
MARGARET BRENNAN: President Trump said that the United States will run the country and that Venezuela will be largely run by, he pointed to you and some of the other cabinet members when he spoke to the public yesterday. He said, The U.S. retains all military options, including boots on the ground until U.S. demands have been fully met. How do you plan to run the country?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, first of all, I think the important thing to point out is that the key to what that regime relies on and is the economy fueled by oil. And right now, it is an oil industry that is backwards and really needs a lot of help and work in terms of, not only that, but it doesn't help the people. None of the money from the oil gets to the people. It's all stolen by the people that are on the top there, and so that's why we have a quarantine.* * * We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes, not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking, so that we no longer have these gang problems, so that they kick the FARC and the ELN out, and that they no longer cozy up to Hezbollah and Iran in our own hemisphere.
MARGARET BRENNAN: What you are talking about is more of a sanctions pressure, not boots on the ground. So just to be clear, there is no plan for U.S. occupation of this country of nearly 30 million people?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I think first of all, the President always retains optionality on anything and on all these matters.What the President has said, obviously, is, you know, and I think what he's pointing to is that this obsession people have about boots and this or that. He,he does not feel like he is going to publicly, you know, rule out options that are available for the United States, even though that's not what you're seeing right now. What you're seeing right now is an oil quarantine that allows us to exert tremendous leverage over what happens next.
This interchange is quite interesting from the perspective of perspective lens. The orienting framework for Ms Brennan is territory. If one State inserts itself in another then the orienting factor is territory and its control. That is the orienting starting point for a public official/bureaucrat type. Secretary Rubio, however, is disoriented by the question. He is not thinking territory at all, except as a factor in the attainment of what he IS looking at--transactions in natural resources and it use and misuse. To "run the country" then is to produce an environment in which transactions and the rules of the transactional order tilt in the favor of the US, or perhaps better put, tilt in a way that transactions cannot have a secondary (or primary effect) of undermining the US or its interests. What Venezuelans otherwise do in pr with their territory is of no concern, nor is Venezuelan territory as such. It is n this sense that many of the statements produced by States, for example that of Mexico, are conceptually at odds with the way the Americans approached the attack and its aftermath. There is, from that perspective, no issue of Venezuelan territorial integrity, nor of Venezuelan governance. The issue is, in the language of international business and human rights--the effort to prevent, mitigate, and remedy adverse impacts to the United States. Territory and governance may be consequential but they are not the objectives. Regime change may occur but that is a secondary effect.
2. Political community.
MARGARET BRENNAN: * * * But I'm curious, because you just described the regime as still in place, essentially. I mean, I'm curious why the Trump administration decided to leave it intact and only arrest Nicolas Maduro and his wife, the person who controls the police, the chief thug, Diosdado Cabellos, he's the interior minister. * * * He is still in place. I'm confused. Are they still wanted by the United States? Why didn't you arrest them if you are taking out the narco terrorist regime?
SECRETARY RUBIO: You're confused? I don't know why that's confusing to you--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --they're still in power.
SECRETARY RUBIO: I mean it's very simple. You're not going to go in and wrap up. You're going to go in and then grab up-- but yeah, but can't go in and suck up five people. They're already complaining about this one operation.* * * And you're asking me, why didn't we do that in five other places at the same time? I mean, that's absurd.
In a techno-legal cognitive universe the logic of action is grounded in a rule structure that tends to see in police action undertaken against law breakers as requiring both personal and institutional action--the threat may be manifested in people, but techno-bureaucracies tend to speak in terms of structural threats and structural responses. As such, where the U.S. action was undertaken against a narco-trafficking regime, it would be logical to destroy the that apparatus by capturing all of those who are wanted. But Secretary Rubio's cognitive lens sees something very different.
3. The nature of Post-Global Empire.MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, the opposition leader María Corina Machado and Edmundo González won that 2024 election, by your own account. They were some of the first people you called when you were Secretary of State, you said, Edmundo González is the rightful president of Venezuela. Is that still the U.S. policy? And if so, are you working on a transition to have those elected leaders run the country?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I think a couple things I have tremendous admiration for María Corina Machado. I have admiration for Edmundo. We have all those views about what the election that happened the last time, and not only us, but many other countries around the world, there's that. And there's and then- but there's the mission we are on right now. We have been very clear from the beginning, because I still think that a lot of people analyze everything that happens in foreign policy through the lens of what happened from 2001 through you know 2015 or 16. The whole, you know, foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan. This is not the Middle East. And our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere. Within the Western Hemisphere, we have a country, potentially a very rich country, that has cozied itself up under the control of this regime. Has cozied up to Iran. Has cozied up to Hezbollah. Has cozied- has allowed narco-trafficking gangs to operate with impunity from their own territory, allows boats with drugs to traffic from their territory. And we are addressing that. And by the way, for eight, nine million people and the largest mass migration event in modern history have left that country since 2014--
[CROSSTALK]
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, but that regime is still in place--
SECRETARY RUBIO: --also having an impact on us, that is what we are addressing now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: When you spoke yesterday--
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, again that- but we're not just addressing the regime. We are addressing the factors that are a threat to the national interest of the United States.
The techno-bureaucracy speaks to regime change. They speak to the integrity and coherent operation of the basic building block of organizational structure--the State. The merchant-type does not. Ms Brennan from her perspective is right to focus in on what would have been of greatest concern to techno-bureaucracies--regimes and regime change in the construction and preservation of stable state organs (and therefor of States). Secretary Rubio finds the question excruciating precisely because that is precisely the type of thinking that is foreign both to the analysis of action in Venezuela and its objective. For Secretary Rubio, the integrity and governmental structures of Venezuela are secondary to the effects of the current State apparatus (and the decisions of their leaders) on the United States. Venezuelan chaos is, in effect Venezuela's problem. . . unless its effects are externalized (and therefore the burdens of its own failures are shared with other States). That is the case with both migration and narco-trafficking. The former exports excess productive forces form Venezuela to be taken care of elsewhere, potentially destabilizing other places. Narco-trafficking represents both a means of destabilizing a State and, when it is undertaken through or with a State apparatus, of doing so for the benefit of that State or its allies. Those negative impact transactions required response.
4. Externalities and the new transactional relationship.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood you spoke with Delcy Rodríguez, who is now, according to President Trump, sworn in as the President, as the leader of Venezuela. Did she promise you that she is expelling all those American adversaries from Venezuelan territory? What exactly did she agree to do when she spoke to you?
SECRETARY RUBIO: We we are going to- our objectives when it comes to how Venezuela impacts the national interest of the United States have not changed, and we want those addressed. We want drug trafficking to stop. We want no more gang members to come our way. We don't want to see the Iranian and, by the way, Cuban presence in the past. We want the oil industry in that country not to go to the benefit of pirates and adversaries of the United States, but for the benefit of the people. We want to see all of that happen. We insist on seeing that happen--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Did you she promise that? SECRETARY RUBIO: --and we are going to work to continue to see that happen- well, right now, the United- we are going to see what happens moving forward, let me just say that. I'm not obviously going to have these conversations in the media. These are delicate and complicated things that require mature statesmanship, and that's what we intend to do. But our goals remain the same. The difference is that the person who was in charge, even though not legitimately in the past was someone you could not work with. We just could not work with him. He is not a person that had ever kept any of the deals he made, broke every deal he ever made, made a fool out of the Biden administration on the deal they made with him, and we offered him, on multiple occasions, an opportunity to remove himself from the scene in a positive way. He chose not to do so- and now he's in New York--
[CROSSTALK]
MARGARET BRENNAN: But, his number two is now running the country- his number two is someone you can work with? And is that what you're implying here? And did she tell you that she will transition to democracy and the woman who won the election along with her partner there, María Corina Machado.
SECRETARY RUBIO: We are going to make- we are going to make our assessments of people. You're asking me to make an assessment. We're going to make assessment- we're going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly in the interim, not what you know some what they've done in the past in many cases, but what they do moving forward. So we're going to find out.
The aftermath is not measured by reference to rebuilding Venezuela to suit American ideological tastes in governance but rather to suit American interests in a State apparatus that is both positively engaged in commerce and no longer poses or creates negative impact. To those ends virtually anyone willing to meet those objectives may be worth dealing with--during good behavior. So, not nation building here but rather transactional relationship building. But also trust in negotiating partners. Mr. Maduro could not be trusted precisely because he was too deeply embedded in transactional intertwining with global criminality and the enemies of the United States who meant to use Venezuela to for their gain , that would be acceptable, but for the purpose of producing negative impact on the US).
And that is probably the most important signal that Secretary Rubio has sent to the leaders in Cuba and Nicaragua. First tier leaders may have to exit, but even Cuba and Nicaragua may keep their State structures if the transactional baselines change.
5. What is sovereignty in the post-global through a transactional lens?
MARGARET BRENNAN: * * *President Trump said María Corina Machado doesn't have the support or respect within the country, and by your own admission, she walloped Nicolas Maduro in the last election. So it does sound like a decision was made, but--
SECRETARY RUBIO: She wasn't on the ballot in the last election.
MARGARET BRENNAN: No, but her, her party was.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Edmundo was.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Correct. So it was an illegitimate election, and that's why he's not a legitimate president.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, but is there an agreement to transition to democracy? It sounds like there's not.
SECRETARY RUBIO: I think what the president pointed out is the obvious. Well, I think what the point, but there has to be a little realism here. Okay, a transition to the market — They've had this regime. They've had this system of Chavismo in place for 15 or 16 years, and everyone's asking, why 24 hours after Nicolas Maduro was arrested, there isn't an election scheduled for tomorrow? That's absurd.
MARGARET BRENNAN: No, no, I'm asking what you talked about.
SECRETARY RUBIO: These things take time. There's a process.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. And you are —
SECRETARY RUBIO: I'm not going to have, I'm not going to publicly get into details about any of those things, other than to tell you that our expectations remain the same, and we are going to judge whoever we're interacting with moving forward by whether or not those conditions are met. We want, of course, we want to see Venezuela transition to be a place completely different than what it looks like today. But, obviously, we don't have the expectation that's going to happen in the next 15 hours. What we do have an expectation is that, that it move in that direction. We think it's in our national interest, and frankly, in the interest of people of Venezuela
This is a most interesting discussion. Ms Brennan correctly from the old perspective focuses on the integrity of the apex state organ and its system as the core objective around which one would, in the past, have wrapped policy objectives and action to fulfill that policy objective. Secretary Rubio finds that approach incomprehensible through the lens of America First. Transactional lenses focus on markets, and consequentially on State organs that can advance the expectations and integrity of markets. Institutionalists tend to view this as upside down thinking, for them the integrity of the State organs is necessary predicate for the integrity of markets under the firm and benign guidance of the State and for the protection of the political-economic model to which it owe the highest duty. Secretary Rubio focuses first on market transition. The rest comes (naturally) later. Market integrity and a well functioning private sector if endless iterative economic transactions produces the basis for the production of a State apparatus that reflects that integrity. That, anyway is the theory. And institutional integrity is a function of local context, and thus is complicated where an outsider is asked to intervene. To do so, perhaps in the mind of the Secretary of State, is to reduce the United States to the conduct and behavior norms of Cuba--and it represents political hegemonistic conduct that this administration appears to be less than interested. It is the deal and deal making that is the foundation--the peculiar ideology for the ordering of the State can then follow. That, anyway, might be one way of understanding the lens. Just as institutionalists view transactions with suspicion; so transactionalists view institution building with equal suspicion. But their suspicions cut in quite different directions and are grounded in incompatible systems for understanding and ordering the world, or at least its political-economic modelling.
6. Petroleum-a-go-go
MARGARET BRENNAN: The president used the word oil 20 times this press conference. You talked about these tremendous oil assets that Venezuela have, has. But the president's last envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, is publicly arguing that you know better than the policy you're backing. He said, quote, "Venezuelan plutocrats, or US oil executives seem to be coming to Mar-a-Lago and whispering about how easy life would be if we just made a deal with the regime once Maduro was gone." Is that what happened here?
SECRETARY RUBIO: No, that's not what happened here. * * * As far as oil, look, oil is critical, not just to fueling economies all over the world. It's critical to Venezuela's future. Their oil industry is completely destroyed. It's destroyed, all those oil fields that used to produce a lot and wealth for their country and their people. Those things are decrepit. They're bankrupt. They need to be reinvested in. It's obvious, you, they do not have the capability to bring up that industry again. They need investment from private companies who are only going to invest under certain guarantees and conditions. That has to go to the benefit of the Venezuelan people. Right now, all of that wealth is stolen. It's stolen, and it goes into the hands of oligarchs around the world and the oligarchs inside of Venezuela. A handful of people benefit from it. The people don't benefit from it. On top of that, it's very simple, okay, in the 21st Century, under the Trump administration, we are not going to have a country like Venezuela in our own hemisphere, in the sphere of control and the crossroads for Hezbollah, for Iran and for every other malign influence in the country, in the world. That's just not going to exist.
The complete transcript of the interview follows below along with the text of Press Release: RUBIO: This Is Our Hemisphere — and President Trump Will Not Allow Our Security to be Threatened,.
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Transcript: Secretary of State Marco Rubio on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Jan. 4, 2026
Updated on: January 4, 2026 / 9:23 AM EST / CBS News
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The following is the transcript of the interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Jan. 4, 2026.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We begin today with Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who joins us this morning from Miami. Good morning to you, Mr. Secretary.
SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: Good morning. Good morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: President Trump said that the United States will run the country and that Venezuela will be largely run by, he pointed to you and some of the other cabinet members when he spoke to the public yesterday. He said, The U.S. retains all military options, including boots on the ground until U.S. demands have been fully met. How do you plan to run the country?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, first of all, I think the important thing to point out is that the key to what that regime relies on and is the economy fueled by oil. And right now, it is an oil industry that is backwards and really needs a lot of help and work in terms of, not only that, but it doesn't help the people. None of the money from the oil gets to the people. It's all stolen by the people that are on the top there, and so that's why we have a quarantine. There's a quarantine right now in which sanctioned oil shipments, there's a boat, and that boat is under US sanctions, we go get a court order, we will seize it. That remains in place, and that's a tremendous amount of leverage that will continue to be in place until we see changes that not just further the national interest of the United States, which is number one, but also that lead to a better future for the people of Venezuela. And so that's the sort of control the President is pointing to when he says that. We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes, not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking, so that we no longer have these gang problems, so that they kick the FARC and the ELN out, and that they no longer cozy up to Hezbollah and Iran in our own hemisphere.
MARGARET BRENNAN: What you are talking about is more of a sanctions pressure, not boots on the ground. So just to be clear, there is no plan for U.S. occupation of this country of nearly 30 million people?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I think first of all, the President always retains optionality on anything and on all these matters. He certainly has the ability and the right under the Constitution of the United States to act against imminent and urgent threats against the country. That said, and all of that said as right now, I think what you see as a force posture is one of the largest naval deployments in modern history, certainly in the Western Hemisphere, and it is capable of stopping not just drug boats, but stopping any of these sanctioned boats that come in and out, and really paralyzing that portion of how the regime, you know, generates revenue, so that will continue to be in place. What the President has said, obviously, is, you know, and I think what he's pointing to is that this obsession people have about boots and this or that. He,he does not feel like he is going to publicly, you know, rule out options that are available for the United States, even though that's not what you're seeing right now. What you're seeing right now is an oil quarantine that allows us to exert tremendous leverage over what happens next.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, he also said the U.S. is ready to stage a second and much larger attack, if we need to do so. But I'm curious, because you just described the regime as still in place, essentially. I mean, I'm curious why the Trump administration decided to leave it intact and only arrest Nicolas Maduro and his wife, the person who controls the police, the chief thug, Diosdado Cabellos, he's the interior minister. He's been indicted by the United States. He was in that indictment the Administration released. He's a narco-terrorist. There's a $25 million price on his head. He's still in place. The defense minister, who has deep ties to Russia, $15 million price on his head. He is still in place. I'm confused. Are they still wanted by the United States? Why didn't you arrest them if you are taking out the narco terrorist regime?
SECRETARY RUBIO: You're confused? I don't know why that's confusing to you--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --they're still in power.
SECRETARY RUBIO: I mean it's very simple. You're not going to go in and wrap up. You're going to go in and then grab up-- but yeah, but can't go in and suck up five people. They're already complaining about this one operation. Imagine the howls we would have from everybody else if we actually had to go and stay there four days to capture four other people. We got the top priority. The number one person on the list was the guy who claimed to be the president of the country that he was not, and he was arrested along with his wife, who was also indicted. And that was a pretty sophisticated and frankly, complicated operation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It was.
SECRETARY RUBIO: It is not easy to land helicopters in the middle of the largest military base in the country, the guy lived on a military base, land within three minutes, kick down his door, grab him, put him in handcuffs, read him his rights, put him in a helicopter and leave the country without losing any American or any American assets. That's not an easy mission. And you're asking me, why didn't we do that in five other places at the same time? I mean, that's absurd. I- I do think this is one of the most, you know, daring, you know, complicated, sophisticated missions this country has carried out in a very long time. Tremendous credit to the U.S. military personnel who did it. It was unbelievable, and a tremendous success. And today, an indicted drug trafficker who was not the legitimate president of Venezuela--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Who we don't recognize, the Biden administration didn't recognize, 60-something countries don't recognize, the European Union doesn't recognize, and many countries in Latin America don't recognize. He was a convicted- he was a indicted drug trafficker. He was arrested. His wife was arrested also--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right but the others--
SECRETARY RUBIO: --and they are now facing justice in the American system of courts--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --The others who were also indicted are still in place. So that's the point of my questioning there. But you talked about not being the legitimate president--
SECRETARY RUBIO: --so you wanted us to land in five other military bases?
MARGARET BRENNAN: No, I'm asking why you chose that this was the limit of the military operation. But to your point that you just made that Maduro was not the legitimate president--
SECRETARY RUBIO: He was- he was the guy was claiming to be the president.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. Well, the opposition--
SECRETARY RUBIO:--He was the top target.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, the opposition leader María Corina Machado and Edmundo González won that 2024 election, by your own account. They were some of the first people you called when you were Secretary of State, you said, Edmundo González is the rightful president of Venezuela. Is that still the U.S. policy? And if so, are you working on a transition to have those elected leaders run the country?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I think a couple things I have tremendous admiration for María Corina Machado. I have admiration for Edmundo. We have all those views about what the election that happened the last time, and not only us, but many other countries around the world, there's that. And there's and then- but there's the mission we are on right now. We have been very clear from the beginning, because I still think that a lot of people analyze everything that happens in foreign policy through the lens of what happened from 2001 through you know 2015 or 16. The whole, you know, foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan. This is not the Middle East. And our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere. Within the Western Hemisphere, we have a country, potentially a very rich country, that has cozied itself up under the control of this regime. Has cozied up to Iran. Has cozied up to Hezbollah. Has cozied- has allowed narco-trafficking gangs to operate with impunity from their own territory, allows boats with drugs to traffic from their territory. And we are addressing that. And by the way, for eight, nine million people and the largest mass migration event in modern history have left that country since 2014--
[CROSSTALK]
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, but that regime is still in place--
SECRETARY RUBIO: --also having an impact on us, that is what we are addressing now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: When you spoke yesterday--
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, again that- but we're not just addressing the regime. We are addressing the factors that are a threat to the national interest of the United States.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood you spoke with Delcy Rodríguez, who is now, according to President Trump, sworn in as the President, as the leader of Venezuela. Did she promise you that she is expelling all those American adversaries from Venezuelan territory? What exactly did she agree to do when she spoke to you?
SECRETARY RUBIO: We we are going to- our objectives when it comes to how Venezuela impacts the national interest of the United States have not changed, and we want those addressed. We want drug trafficking to stop. We want no more gang members to come our way. We don't want to see the Iranian and, by the way, Cuban presence in the past. We want the oil industry in that country not to go to the benefit of pirates and adversaries of the United States, but for the benefit of the people. We want to see all of that happen. We insist on seeing that happen--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Did you she promise that?
SECRETARY RUBIO: --and we are going to work to continue to see that happen- well, right now, the United- we are going to see what happens moving forward, let me just say that. I'm not obviously going to have these conversations in the media. These are delicate and complicated things that require mature statesmanship, and that's what we intend to do. But our goals remain the same. The difference is that the person who was in charge, even though not legitimately in the past was someone you could not work with. We just could not work with him. He is not a person that had ever kept any of the deals he made, broke every deal he ever made, made a fool out of the Biden administration on the deal they made with him, and we offered him, on multiple occasions, an opportunity to remove himself from the scene in a positive way. He chose not to do so- and now he's in New York--
[CROSSTALK]
MARGARET BRENNAN: But, his number two is now running the country- his number two is someone you can work with? And is that what you're implying here? And did she tell you that she will transition to democracy and the woman who won the election along with her partner there, María Corina Machado.
SECRETARY RUBIO: We are going to make- we are going to make our assessments of people. You're asking me to make an assessment. We're going to make assessment- we're going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly in the interim, not what you know some what they've done in the past in many cases, but what they do moving forward. So we're going to find out. You're asking me, why- do I know what decisions people are going to make? I don't. I do know this, that if they don't make the right decisions, the United States will retain multiple levers of leverage to ensure that our interests are protected, and that includes the oil quarantine that's in place, among other things. Well, so we but we are going to judge moving forward. We're going to judge everything by what they do, and we're going to see what they do.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, because yesterday, President Trump said María Corina Machado doesn't have the support or respect within the country, and by your own admission, she walloped Nicolas Maduro in the last election. So it does sound like a decision was made, but--
SECRETARY RUBIO: She wasn't on the ballot in the last election.
MARGARET BRENNAN: No, but her, her party was.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Edmundo was.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Correct. So it was an illegitimate election, and that's why he's not a legitimate president.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, but is there an agreement to transition to democracy? It sounds like there's not.
SECRETARY RUBIO: I think what the president pointed out is the obvious. Well, I think what the point, but there has to be a little realism here. Okay, a transition to the market — They've had this regime. They've had this system of Chavismo in place for 15 or 16 years, and everyone's asking, why 24 hours after Nicolas Maduro was arrested, there isn't an election scheduled for tomorrow? That's absurd.
MARGARET BRENNAN: No, no, I'm asking what you talked about.
SECRETARY RUBIO: These things take time. There's a process.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. And you are —
SECRETARY RUBIO: I'm not going to have, I'm not going to publicly get into details about any of those things, other than to tell you that our expectations remain the same, and we are going to judge whoever we're interacting with moving forward by whether or not those conditions are met. We want, of course, we want to see Venezuela transition to be a place completely different than what it looks like today. But, obviously, we don't have the expectation that's going to happen in the next 15 hours. What we do have an expectation is that, that it move in that direction. We think it's in our national interest, and frankly, in the interest of people of Venezuela.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The president used the word oil 20 times this press conference. You talked about these tremendous oil assets that Venezuela have, has. But the president's last envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, is publicly arguing that you know better than the policy you're backing. He said, quote, "Venezuelan plutocrats, or US oil executives seem to be coming to Mar-a-Lago and whispering about how easy life would be if we just made a deal with the regime once Maduro was gone." Is that what happened here?
SECRETARY RUBIO: No, that's not what happened here. What happened here is that we arrested a narco trafficker who's now going to stand trial in the United States for the crimes he's committed against our people for 15 years, and the person who helped him, of course, his wife, who was co-located with him, so she was arrested as well. That's what happened here. As far as oil, look, oil is critical, not just to fueling economies all over the world. It's critical to Venezuela's future. Their oil industry is completely destroyed. It's destroyed, all those oil fields that used to produce a lot and wealth for their country and their people. Those things are decrepit. They're bankrupt. They need to be reinvested in. It's obvious, you, they do not have the capability to bring up that industry again. They need investment from private companies who are only going to invest under certain guarantees and conditions. That has to go to the benefit of the Venezuelan people. Right now, all of that wealth is stolen. It's stolen, and it goes into the hands of oligarchs around the world and the oligarchs inside of Venezuela. A handful of people benefit from it. The people don't benefit from it. On top of that, it's very simple, okay, in the 21st Century, under the Trump administration, we are not going to have a country like Venezuela in our own hemisphere, in the sphere of control and the crossroads for Hezbollah, for Iran and for every other malign influence in the country, in the world. That's just not going to exist.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, would love to keep talking to you, but I'm told you are out of time. I have to leave it there.
MARCO RUBIO: Thank you.
* * *
This morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined multiple news programs to discuss the Trump Administration’s decisive operation that successfully apprehended indicted narcoterrorist and illegitimate former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Secretary Rubio underscored President Donald J. Trump’s ironclad commitment to preventing the Western Hemisphere from becoming a safe haven for drug traffickers, Iranian proxies, or hostile regimes that endanger our national security — declaring the days of weakness are over and the U.S. will deploy every tool to eradicate these threats from our backyard.
- “There’s not a war. We are at war against drug trafficking organizations — not a war against Venezuela.” (Watch)
- “We don’t have U.S. forces on the ground in Venezuela. They were on the ground for about two hours when they went to capture Maduro… What the President is saying is very simple — and that is as President of the United States, he is not going to go around telling people what he’s not going to do.” (Watch)
- “This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live — and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States.” (Watch)
- “The first steps are securing what’s in the national interest of the United States and also beneficial to the people of Venezuela, and those are the things that we’re focused on right now. No more drug trafficking. No more Iran, Hezbollah presence there. No more using the oil industry to enrich all our adversaries around the world.” (Watch)
- “This was not an action that required congressional approval. In fact, it couldn’t require congressional approval because this was not an invasion. This is not an extended military operation… We will seek congressional approval for actions that require congressional approval. Otherwise, they’ll get congressional notification.” (Watch)
- “The whole foreign policy apparatus thinks everything is Libya, everything is Iraq, everything is Afghanistan. This is not the Middle East, and our mission here is very different. This is the Western Hemisphere.” (Watch)
- “The most immediate changes are the ones that are in the national interests of the United States. That’s why we’re involved here — because of how it applies and has a direct impact on the United States.” (Watch)
- “We’ve seen how our adversaries all over the world are exploiting and extracting resources from Africa, from every other country. They’re not going to do it in the Western Hemisphere. That is not going to happen under President Trump. Read our national security strategy. He is serious about it.” (Watch)
- “What we are going to react to is very simple: what do you do? Not what you’re saying publicly, what happens… Do the drugs stop coming? Are the changes made? Is Iran expelled? Is Hezbollah and Iran no longer able to operate against our interests from Venezuela?” (Watch)
- “It’s running policy — the policy with regards to this. We want Venezuela to move in a certain direction because not only do we think it’s good for the people of Venezuela, it’s in our national interest.” (Watch)
- “We retain all the options we had before this raid and this capture and this arrest… until such time as changes are made.” (Watch)
- “In the Biden Administration, they had a $25 million reward for [Maduro’s] capture — so we have a reward for his capture but we’re not going to enforce it? That’s the difference between President Trump and everybody else… President Trump did something about it.” (Watch)
- “Until they address [the problems], they will continue to face this oil quarantine. They will continue to face pressure from the United States. We will continue to target drug boats if they try to run towards the United States. We will continue to seize the boats that are sanctioned with court orders. We will continue to do that and potentially other things until the things we need to see addressed are addressed… The number one thing we care about is the safety, security, wellbeing, and prosperity of the United States.” (Watch)
- “Maduro is not just an indicted drug trafficker; he was an illegitimate president. He was not the head of state. I continue to see these media reports referring to him as ‘President Maduro’ and the ‘head of state.’ He was not the head of state.” (Watch)
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