There was no dancing, let alone prancing, in the Manhattan courtroom as former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro was arraigned on four charges, including narco-terrorism and weapons trafficking, following his capture by American forces on a military base in Caracas on Saturday. Instead, Maduro, whose terpsichorean moves to a musical remix of his “No War, Yes Peace” speech had apparently incurred Trump’s ire, seemed like a shrunken figure as he appeared in prison attire and ankle shackles.
“I’m still president,” he stated. But the no-nonsense 92-year-old federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein, quashed his attempt at delivering a personal liberation theology speech. His wife, Cilia Flores, the former first lady of Venezuela and crony of Hugo Chavez, was nursing a head injury and appeared to have suffered bruising near her right eye. It wasn’t exactly Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena facing a military trial and swift execution during Christmas 1989, but Maduro’s reign had clearly come to an ignominious terminus.
The main thing that Maduro and his helpmate probably confront is sheer boredom, which may be its own form of condign punishment. The trial seems unlikely to begin for another year while this duo is held in the hulking Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, which opened in 1994 and was called by a former warden “one of the most troubled if not the most troubled facilities in the Bureau of Prisons.”
But Maduro and Flores might welcome the prospect of making the acquaintance of another high-profile inmate at the center – rap star Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. On Sunday a protest on behalf of Maduro took place outside the Brooklyn center as demonstrators waved sign declaring “No blood for oil.”
The real action, though, remains in the Caribbean, where American naval forces remain poised to threaten the junta that retains power in Caracas. After taking a few potshots at Washington, Delcy Rodriguez was on her best behavior. She never mentioned Maduro’s name as she was sworn in as the country’s interim president on Monday.
Trump made waves by declaring that he intends to “run” the country. Running it means something other than what Washington policy wonks might understand as controlling a country. In Trump’s mind, it appears to constitute what he has called “total access” to its oil fields. Freedom, elections and the whole kit and caboodle of the democracy promoters is a matter of indifference to Trump. Rather, Trump has indicated that he wants to open rapidly the spigots in Venezuela, which holds 17 percent of the world’s oil reserves. But how quickly the oil industry can be restored and whether American oil giants even want to venture into this volatile region once more is an open question.
Nor is this all. For the charter members of Trump’s America First base, including legislators Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massie, the episode represents a fundamental betrayal of the precepts that first propelled Trump to power in 2016 and again in 2024. As vice-president JD Vance remains reticent about the Venezuela caper, it’s Secretary of Marco Rubio a (quondam?) neocon who has emerged as the driving force of administration policy.
A few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal editorial page called for regime change in Cuba next. Rubio has made that his mission. Writing in the American Conservative, Juan David Rojas observes, “While it may still prove insufficient for the secretary that Maduro’s regime survives his capture, it’s possible that Rubio is willing to compromise by letting Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez take control, provided she redirects Venezuelan oil tankers away from Havana’s ports.”
Trump and his advisers, however, are feeling cocky. On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told an audience of sailors and civilians in Newport News, Virginia, “Seems those Russian air defenses didn’t work quite so well, did they?” Trump himself has been making noises about taking on Mexico, Colombia, Cuba and Greenland. Meanwhile, at the United Nations Security Council meeting on Venezuela, ambassador Mike Waltz asserted that the venture was merely a “law enforcement operation.” If so, it seems that Trump is acquiring an expansive taste for imposing what he sees as law and order not only at home but also abroad.
