The Trump administration is demanding that Venezuela's interim leader take several pro-U.S. actions that her predecessor refused if she wants to avoid a similar fate. The Trump team thinks Rodriguez is on a "short leash" and is "confident they can whip her in whatever direction they want before they dispose of her and move on," a person close to the administration said.
Q: What do you need over the next two weeks from Delcy RodrÃguez? TRUMP: Total access. We need total access. We need access to the oil and other things
-- Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) Jan 4, 2026 at 8:09 PM
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Humorously related ...
Jon Stewart says Trump reverse ICE'd' Maduro: He was actually imported'
www.newsnationnow.com
... on Stewart says President Donald Trump helped orchestrate a "reverse ICE" operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicols Maduro.
"He was actually imported to a jail in Brooklyn," Stewart quipped of Maduro.
Stewart focused his Monday monologue on Maduro while hosting Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" days after Trump announced that the U.S. had captured Venezuela's president as part of a "large-scale strike" in the South American country.
What did the Venezuela briefing tell lawmakers?
"This is actually a very fraught moment for the world," Stewart, a frequent Trump critic, said.
"It is highly unusual for any government, any sovereign nation, to violate the airspace and territory of another sovereign nation and hit the grab-and-go on their president," the comedian said.
"Look, no one knows how this operation is going to work out," Stewart said.
"But based on the United States's track record, my guess is we're going to be really happy about this for a couple of weeks, and then 30 years from now, there will be a Venezuelan leftist revolution," Stewart predicted, "and the new government will point to this moment as the reason our embassy there is on fire, and it will absolutely ruin a Democrat's presidency."
"Generally, that's how this [stuff] works," Stewart said.
"And remember, the reason MAGA was so high on Donald Trump was that he was the guy who wasn't going to get involved with this kind of [stuff] anymore," Stewart told the audience, before cueing up a 2020 clip of the president.
"We do not seek war. We do not seek nation building. We do not seek regime change," Trump said at the time.
Stewart also hit at Trump's comments about his desire for the U.S. to take over Venezuela's oil production.
"We're going to have presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil," the president said Sunday.
"Generally in American history, when we intervene in another country -- whether true or not -- we come up with a high-minded pretense: liberating the people, spreading democracy, introducing baseball to the Japanese," Stewart told his "Daily Show" audience.
But the Trump administration, he added, is "going full conquistador in front of our eyes." ...
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