President Donald Trump confirmed to reporters on Friday that reports indicating Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro was offering the United States access to the nation’s natural resources in exchange for being allowed to continue indefinitely in power were correct.
“He has offered everything,” Trump responded to a reporter asking him to comment on the rumors of Maduro and his highest-level cronies reaching out to his administration. “He’s offered everything; you’re right.”
“You know why? Because he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States,” the president affirmed, concluding the press engagement on that note.
President Trump was taking questions on Friday as part of a meeting in the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in town to discuss efforts to use dialogue to end the nearly decade-and-a-half-old Russian occupation of his country. President Trump announced on Wednesday, shortly before Zelensky’s arrival to America, that he had held a phone call with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and the two agreed to met in person in Budapest, Hungary, under the auspices of pro-China Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The question about Venezuela was not directly related to peace efforts in Ukraine, though Maduro and his ilk are close allies of Putin’s and have enthusiastically supported the invasion of Ukraine. Maduro has mocked Zelensky as a “clown” on his television program and compared him to Juan Guaidó, a former Venezuelan lawmaker who unsuccessfully tried to dislodge Maduro and the ruling socialists from power in 2019.
The Trump administration has focused its foreign policy heavily on Latin America, particularly combating the malign influence of the Venezuelan regime and its patron state, communist Cuba. As part of these efforts, the Trump administration increased an already existing bounty on Maduro himself to $50 million for information leading to his capture. While extensive evidence has documented over a decade of human rights atrocities committed by Maduro, including the mass slaughter of Venezuelan civilians, the Trump administration has primarily opposed Maduro in response to his leadership of transcontinental drug trafficking operations and his association with the Tren de Aragua terrorist gang.
Wanted poster for Nicolas Maduro. (State.gov)
“Maduro helped manage and ultimately lead the Cartel of the Suns, a Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials,” the State Department explains on its page detailing the $50 million reward.
The State Department added:
As he gained power in Venezuela, Maduro participated in a corrupt and violent narco-terrorism conspiracy with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. Maduro negotiated multi-ton shipments of FARC-produced cocaine; directed the Cartel of the Suns to provide military-grade weapons to the FARC; coordinated with narcotics traffickers in Honduras and other countries to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking; and solicited assistance from FARC leadership in training an unsanctioned militia group that functioned, in essence, as an armed forces unit for the Cartel of the Suns.
Reports began surfacing last week in Maduro-friendly American media that the Maduro regime had reached out to Trump hoping to stop the actions he approved to limit its handsome drug profits by offering its natural resources. According to the leftist New York Times, the regime “offered the Trump administration a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth in discussions that lasted for months,” citing anonymous “people.”
On Thursday, the Miami Herald published a similarly sourced anonymous report specifying that the offer came from Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and her brother, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, two of Maduro’s most trusted henchmen. The Rodríguez siblings reportedly presented themselves as palatable successors to Maduro and suggested that the United States, after they take over Venezuela, would receive access to lucrative oil and mining sites. This offer reportedly came to Washington in April through the government of Qatar.
“A hardline [sic] faction led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio prevailed, warning that any agreement short of regime change would betray democratic principles,” the Herald claimed.
The Associated Press independently published a very similar story, noting that the plan that its anonymous sources detailed appeared to be the same one reported by the Herald. The reports claimed that Maduro was aware of and approved of the plan, rather than the Rodríguez siblings going behind his back.
In an interview with Breitbart News in 2019, then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) predicted that Maduro’s inner circle would turn on him – except for the Rodriguez siblings, who he identified as the least likely to betray Maduro aside from Cilia Flores, his wife and “first combatant” of the regime.
“There is no loyalty to Maduro,” he noted at the time. “[There] is basically loyalty to a system that is making them rich and has allowed their families to enjoy life and stay out of jail.”
The Rodríguez siblings greatly increased their inner circle power in 2024 when the regime announced the imprisonment of former oil minister Tareck El Aissami, believed to be Maduro’s direct liaison to Hezbollah and the Iranian regime. Maduro charged El Aissami with treason, money laundering, and corruption, stripping him of the oil minister title – possibly the most lucrative position in the regime. Reports at the time, citing anonymous individuals near the regime, credited the Rodríguezes with El Aissami’s purge.
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