By William Serafino October 13, 2025
Resumen is running this article to give a different angle of the possible direction that the imperial intentions of the Trump Administration might go in its aggression against Venezuela. While tensions remain high and no matter what comes next it must be remembered that the end goal for the empire is to end the Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez that has continued under the leadership of Maduro. – editor
On October 6, in a story that went viral due to its reach and explosive content, the New York Times reported that Donald Trump “called Grenell and instructed him to cease all diplomatic contact” with Venezuela, due to his “growing frustration that Maduro has not agreed to U.S. demands to voluntarily step down and the continued insistence by Venezuelan officials that they have nothing to do with drug trafficking.”
The publication weakened expectations of an eventual de-escalation in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Venezuela that had emerged after a series of statements by Richard Grenell, the White House special envoy, in which he advocated an agreement between Caracas and Washington to “avoid war.”
Just days earlier, the secretary of the renamed Department of War, Pete Hegseth, released a video of the fourth air strike on a vessel allegedly linked to Venezuela and drug trafficking. The most recent extrajudicial execution was a serial replica of previous illegal actions in international waters.
The New York newspaper article had an obvious neoconservative bias, attributable to Marco Rubio.
In summary, Grenell was disavowed and even punished by Trump for his miscalculated negotiating zeal with Miraflores, while the Cuban-American Secretary of State and National Security Advisor was portrayed as a trusted confidant whom the Republican tycoon was supporting in his obsession with overthrowing President Nicolás Maduro.
But one very important question remained unanswered after the publication. As if he were a split personality like in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the version of Trump presented by the New York Times was not entirely convincing.
When referring to Venezuela and military actions against alleged narco-terrorists, the Republican leader has not stated that his intention is regime change, nor has he made visible his frustration with the illegal measures taken in Caribbean waters.
In fact, quite the opposite has been true: Trump has expressed satisfaction with the extrajudicial executions reported so far and their subsequent effects, praising, for example, the decrease in ship activity and fishing in the area.
In any case, the Trump in that publication was a Trump modeled on Marco Rubio’s warmongering approach. Following the alleged “revelation,” Grenell’s silence has been notable, but so has the fact that there have been no new attacks or credible signs of an imminent catastrophic escalation against Venezuelan sovereignty.
On October 12, just six days after the piece on Trump’s frustration, in an extensive report for the US media outlet POLITICO, Nahal Tossi warns that the Republican tycoon “has not given any orders to directly eliminate Maduro.”
In the article, Tossi asserts, according to sources close to the White House chief, that Trump has considered various military options to intensify pressure on Venezuela, but is not convinced about moving toward regime change as the ultimate goal of the destabilization agenda against Caracas.
But the most revealing aspect of the text is the following: “The US measures against Maduro (the details of which were previously reported by The New York Times) also fit in with the individual objectives of some of Trump’s advisers.”
This element allows us to infer that affiliates of the MAGA movement within the Trump administration, a group in which Grenell occupies an important position in terms of foreign policy vision, would be responding to the narrative promoted by Rubio in the New York Times with the intention of discrediting it and diminishing its reach.
The MAGA footprint in the publication comes not only from that paragraph, but also from an earlier one, which states that Trump is not convinced about using U.S. military power to overthrow Maduro. “This is partly because it could raise alarms among the MAGA base, which has a strong isolationist bent,” a warning about the underlying political and electoral costs for Trump himself if he decides to go all-in on the regime change agenda against Venezuela.
POLITICO’s pro-MAGA piece in response to the New York newspaper’s pro-Rubio publication shows that the outcome of the operation against Venezuela is largely being decided in the media, the main battleground for the MAGA and neoconservative wing of the Trump administration, who are fighting hard to impose their vision on the US government’s foreign policy.
From both publications, it is possible to conclude that Trump remains undecided regarding the maximum pressure 2.0 campaign against Venezuela. But this indecision is not the result of a deep reasoning about costs and benefits, but rather his own style of political management, lucidly defined by John Feffer in a recent article in Foreign Policy in Focus: “Since Trump does not make plans and instead improvises with great pomposity, his administration has probably not yet decided how to push for regime change in Venezuela. The president likes to pit rival factions within his administration against each other to see what consequences the internal carnage will have.“
Simon Tisdall, in an article for The Guardian, shares this view and ventures to add a prediction, stating that Trump ”generally has no idea what he is doing, either in Venezuela or in Latin America in general. He has no plan. He imposes his influence, makes impulsive errors of judgment, fosters fear of foreigners, and bases his policy on whether he “likes” other leaders. In 2019, with Maduro on the ropes, Trump blinked. Today, large-scale military intervention in Venezuela remains unlikely.
More likely is an intensification of the pressure campaign with destabilization, sanctions, maritime attacks, and air and commando raids. Trump seems inclined to continue ambiguously arbitrating the conflict between MAGA and the hawks, with the aim of taking advantage in the short and medium term of the results of that contraction and the tangible benefits it could bring him for his more immediate calculations of power.
There he could find a compelling reason to dismiss Rubio in an isolationist gesture toward the MAGA world or find in the military escalation proposed by the former Florida senator against Venezuela a geopolitical triumph that would allow him to compensate for his poor domestic performance in the economy and inflation management, areas where all polls indicate that the president is suffering a progressive decline in his approval rating among voters.
In short, the White House’s ambiguity is giving Venezuela time to prepare for the worst-case scenario, while President Maduro grows stronger. For Rubio, time is passing in a tense atmosphere and the pressure on him is mounting. The MAGA movement, led by Grenell, is waiting for the secretary to fail so they can finally eject him from Trump’s cabinet. This would allow the special envoy to regain the seat at Foggy Bottom that he believes he has deserved since his boss won the election.