Name: Mary Anastasia O'Grady on What's Next for Venezuela and Maduro
Uploaded: 2026-01-04T21:07:00Z
Duration: 15 min 41 s
Description: Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the Journal's "Americas" columnist, speaks with Free Expression editor Matthew Hennessey about the weekend U.S. military raid in Venezuela and what it means for the region's future.

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Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the Journal's "Americas" columnist, speaks with Free Expression editor Matthew Hennessey about the weekend U.S. military raid in Venezuela and what it means for the region's future.

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260104/d08f7b28-39bc-41b5-9549-2db6b0782307/2/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Mary Anastasia O'Grady on What's Next for Venezuela and Maduro

Hello, I'm Matthew Hennessey. I'm the editor of Free Expression, the new daily newsletter from the Editorial Pages of The Wall Street Journal. I am here today talking to Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the Americas columnist at The Wall Street Journal Opinion Page. Nobody knows more about Latin America than Mary in here on this very momentous weekend. We're gonna talk to Mary about what's been happening in Venezuela and what to expect next. Mary, thank you for joining me.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Matt.

Let's begin by talking about exactly what happened this weekend. What are your sources telling you about exactly what went down in Caracas and how it was experienced on the ground?

Well, thank you. As surprising as it was in the initial moments and I was woken up around 2:30 in the morning on Saturday morning, we knew this was coming because Donald Trump had built up this huge armada in the Southern Caribbean, and it was often remarked that he had little choice but to actually execute some kind of an operation. Otherwise, he would look like Maduro defeated him if he just did all this bluffing and then didn't carry anything out. So, in that sense, I think it was expected, but the level of precision and the sort of shock and awe that was delivered, I think, was impressive by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, it was just incredible how they had great intelligence. The intelligence had been following Maduro, so they knew very a lot about his movements, a lot about the compound where he lived, and so forth. And they also did a great coordination between the Army and the Navy to actually bring in the helicopters, suppress the air defenses of the Venezuelan military, and then finally repel out of those helicopters down to the ground so that they could go into the compound where he was staying and surprise him in the middle of the night and take on his security detail. He had a security detail for many years now that is largely Cuban. Cuba's really bad at everything; you can tell by looking at the mess the country is in. But they're very good at military spying, intelligence, and security. And so they had been the ones that were providing security to him, and they were very much coaching him that he shouldn't back down from the US because look at them, they've survived 67 years. He could, too, the US wouldn't do anything. So the element of surprise was critical here and very effective.

Was Maduro in Caracas, in the center of town, or was he in-

He was in... He was in Fuerte Tiuna, which is basically in Caracas. I mean, it's not right downtown Caracas, but it's in Caracas. And it was widely known that most of the higher ups in the regime basically were in Fuerte Tiuna. So you would think that it would be better guarded than it was, apparently. But again, I think the US military outsmarted them and outmaneuvered them. And I'm told that upwards of 20 Cubans were killed. I mean, there was a shootout when they tried to get into the compound. It's miraculous that no Americans were injured, but on top of that, some large number of Cubans were killed and many were injured as well.

Well, in addition to being a military triumph, it seems like it was an intelligence triumph for-

Exactly.

So, I read some reporting that suggested that the electricity was cut in Caracas shortly before the-

Yeah.

Before the raid began. And that the CIA may have had at least one plant very close to Maduro, keeping them abreast of his moves, his movements. Have you heard anything about the CIA's activities here?

Well, I've heard for months now that the CIA was doing a very good job in prepping for some kind of an operation. I did not hear that one story about someone close to him. For sure, the power was cut in key parts of the city, not the entire city, but it got pretty dark in key parts of the city and they also knocked out cell towers. So, that was an important aspect of the overall operation.

And indicates that we or someone has the power to do that, which is not always an easy thing to do, so it suggests some real infiltration of some key levers of society in Venezuela.

Yeah, right. And it ought to make the rest of the regime pretty nervous. I mean, I mentioned in my column that there were rumors that some of the military generals had fled, but I think this idea of whether it could be done again is gonna be critical to how the rest of the regime responds to Donald Trump's suggestion that they turn power over to a transition government, which will allow for elections. And I think that's what we need to be thinking about next.

How deep does that remaining regime element go? We hear that Maduro gave the Trump Administration just a ridiculously long list of people he wanted protected or flown out of the country.

Yeah.

Are we talking about a coterie of 3, 4, 500 people, or are we talking about thousands of people that would remain loyal to the Maduro, the remnants of the Maduro regime?

Well, I'm only guessing here, but I think it's in the hundreds. But still, that's a lot of people. I mean, one of the problems, one of the key problems, I think, that they're gonna have right now is that the generals, the highest-ranking generals, and there are hundreds of them, were big beneficiaries of the drug trafficking and the criminal businesses that the regime is involved in. And that includes also the vice president who's now been sworn in as the new dictator. And that's Delcy Rodriguez. These people are all beneficiaries of the system they built, and so they're not gonna wanna let go very easily. They're gonna have to be convinced by the reality that it could happen to them. And that's the kind of game, I think, Delcy Rodriguez is playing right now. She's expressing a lot of bravado about how the nation of Venezuela is independent and sovereign, all this kind of stuff. But I think that she will be less inclined to try to tough it out if the Trump Administration continues to make the case that it could happen to her, too. That's, I think, the key element here.

Well, it seems like a lot would hinge on whether or not she believes that threat is credible. I mean, you know-

Exactly.

This is an extraordinary thing that the US did over the weekend. Are they really gonna wanna reload and come back? Who is Delcy Rodriguez? What do we know about her? Is she just a politician? Is she just a tottie of Maduro who just happened to be in the number two slot at the right time? What's her background?

Well, she's kind of, I would call her the Madame Defarge of the operation. She's very ruthless, very... I think she was described in one news story I read today that very Machiavellian. She's the sister of Jorge Rodriguez, and they call them the Rodriguez Hermanos. He's been the president of the top dog in the Venezuelan assembly for some time now. And she's been what they call the vice president, the vice dictator. She's a Marxist, she's very committed to the cause, but also a big recipient of all the benefits that come with being in that position. Loves designer handbags, designer shoes. Your typical Marxist. I've heard rumors that what the Trump Administration will do is similar to what they did for Maduro, which is offer him a way to get out. They'd rather not go the violent path. They'd rather go the peaceful path, which is, "You wanna get out? Here's a visa, you can go live somewhere else," and that sort of thing. And so far, she's not taking it. Now, one problem she's gonna have is similar to the problem Maduro had, which is even if he wanted to leave, the Cubans and the Russians didn't wanna let him leave, and people would say that he wouldn't be even partway down the jet bridge before he would get shot. I don't know how strong that... How true that is. But, for sure, as I mentioned before, the Cubans have been telling the Venezuelans that they need to tough it out, that the US will not invade, they will not put troops in the country. They won't take the country over, so they can stick it out and eventually stay in power. And unfortunately, some of the things that Donald Trump said yesterday are making democrats, small-D democrats, worried about this because if it's only about oil, she could probably cut a deal with the Trump Administration to say, "Okay, you can come, and we will leave your oil wells alone, and you can build up the oil wells." And so if that's where his emphasis is, rather than on political prisoners or on free elections and that sort of thing, she can probably cut a deal with them. That would be, I think, a big mistake on the part of the Trump Administration and something they would live to regret.

Maduro is in Brooklyn now, as is his wife. We have Delcy Rodriguez in Caracas. Let's just say that Delcy Rodriguez takes the deal, the visa that you're talking about. What is your impression of what could come next in Venezuela? A lot of people were expecting that Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Prize winner, would be sort of the natural next leader of Venezuela. But Trump seemed to throw cold water on that yesterday. Is there someone else in Venezuela, some other small-D democrats, as you put it, who could step into that position to lead the country?

Well, the problem is not that one individual. The problem is the military and the military leadership. And there's at least hundreds of generals and some significant part of them have decided that they're gonna stick with the old regime. And that's a problem, you take out Delcy Rodriguez, you still have Diosdado Cabello, you still have Vladimir Padrino, who's very close to the Russians, he's the Defense Minister. Cabello is the Minister of the Interior. You still have these guys hanging around. I think you have to get rid of all of them. But the country is also very... The democrats, the small-D democrats, are also very sensitive to the idea that you cannot just wipe out the whole military. That is kind of the problem of De-Ba'athification from Iraq, that if you just get rid of everybody who was kind of involved with the regime, you don't have anything left and you have chaos. So, the idea is that you would have to decapitate the very top leadership, Rodriguez, Cabello, Padrino, and some significant part of those generals who don't wanna cooperate with a democracy; and then elevate people who are at the lower lengths, colonels, and captains, and so forth, who are interested in change and do want democracy. And that's what would lead the country into a new phase. And that's not that easy to do because, as I said, you have to convince these generals that all the benefits that they've been getting, and people like Delcy Rodriguez and her handbags, that all that's gonna go away, but they're gonna be happier living somewhere else and get them out of the country or kill them. And that's a tall order. But right now, I mean, the offer to Rodriguez is to use her power as the Commander-in-Chief to basically reshape the military into something that wants to cooperate with a democracy. And then, Donald Trump has nothing to say about whether Maria Corina Machado is the next president of Venezuela because there will be an election, and I think she would probably win that election. But the important thing is that his job, if he wants to continue or follow through with what he started, is to basically rebuild the structure that would allow for free elections that would require either Delcy Rodriguez getting on board or getting out.

Do you see any immediate consequences for the region in the short term from this, anything that might change in some of these neighboring countries or in Cuba, their attitudes towards meddling in American politics or in the region largely?

Well, the country, I think, that's most interesting here is Columbia because it's the neighbor of Venezuela. Colombians don't like Maduro, and there's an election there in May. Now, Gustavo Petro, who's the current president, won't be running. But it'll be interesting to see whether this change of this turn of events is an effects at all of the election. We don't really know who the top candidates are gonna be yet. Columbia would be... It would be very important if Columbia were to elect someone from the center right and to sort of reverse a lot of the destructive policies that Petro has put in place.

How do you think this looks for Trump and Republicans heading into this brand-new, this midterm election year?

Well, I think so much is gonna depend on how it plays out. I mean, if it ends up being just a huge and very impressive military operation to arrest one guy who was a drug trafficker, but Venezuela doesn't change at all, and you have Delcy Rodriguez taking his place, and everything as the status quo is the same. And even if they say, "Okay, well, Exxon can come back to Columbia and we will make them whole," even if there's some deal like that on oil but Venezuela remains a dictatorship, it bodes very poorly for Donald Trump. I don't think he will come away having achieved anything, really. I mean, he has to follow through on this. And what he needs to do is continue with the storyline that he began with, which is that Maduro needs to go, but not Maduro as an individual, but Maduro as as a dictatorship. And if he doesn't follow through on that, I think it won't be good for his legacy.

The other thing that happened on New Year's Day was that we saw the inauguration of a new mayor in New York City, a reminder as if one was needed that New York is filled with very left-wing people who hate Donald Trump. Is it possible-

And who wear... And who wear expensive boots, by the way.

Right, is it possible that Maduro could be acquitted at trial in a New York courtroom and end up a free man after all of this, do you think?

No, I don't think so. This is a federal court, first of all. This is not a-

Yeah, but the jurors will be New Yorkers.

Well, I don't know, maybe we should make a bet about that, but I think he'll probably be convicted. They have a ton of evidence on him, a lot. He could, however, be pardoned by a future president. We know that happens.

It sure does. And if the winds change, maybe he could be pardoned by the current president. Who knows?

I mean, did Juan Orlando Hernandez, the drug-trafficking Honduran, ever think that he would be pardoned by Donald Trump?

He sure didn't. Visit wsj.com, find the Free Expression tab, and sign up for the newsletter today.

WSJ Opinion: Mary Anastasia O'Grady on What's Next for Venezuela

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