Podcast Summary: Apple News Today – "Trump didn’t take military action against Venezuela in his first term. Here’s what changed."

Date: January 10, 2026
Host: Shumita Basu
Guest: Jonathan Blitzer, staff writer at The New Yorker

Overview

This episode examines the dramatic U.S. special operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, a move that marked an abrupt shift from former President Trump’s first-term approach. Host Shumita Basu and guest Jonathan Blitzer dissect the intersection of ideology, international politics, U.S. domestic interests, and the question of oil that led to this intervention—an event raising profound humanitarian, political, and legal questions for Venezuela, the U.S., and beyond.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Backdrop: Why Venezuela?

• Multiple Motives Converge: Venezuela is entangled in several Trump administration agendas including regime change, anti-socialism, drug interdiction, immigration, and access to natural resources.
• Prolonged Crisis: Years of dictatorship, economic collapse, and fraudulent elections led to mass migration (over 8 million Venezuelans fled since 2013).
• Influence of Key Figures:
  • Marco Rubio – Long-standing advocate for toppling Maduro, motivated by a vision to weaken both the Venezuelan and Cuban regimes (Venezuela being “the lifeblood” of Cuba via oil support).
  • Trump’s Evolving Stance: While “he did a lot of saber rattling about the need for regime change in Venezuela” in his first term, Trump hesitated to commit troops, preferring rhetoric and pressure, not intervention—until now.
  • Stephen Miller / Immigration Hardliners: Venezuela was portrayed as responsible for criminal migration—"Of course, this is not true, but that is the claim." (Jon Blitzer, 04:18).

[03:45] Blitzer:

“Given the different factions that are at play... that’s how the country has emerged as such a clear target for these political reasons, primarily, yeah.”

2. Drug War Justifications & Contradictions

• US Military Strikes on Alleged Smuggling Boats:
  • The administration justified attacks as anti-drug measures—yet evidence is murky.
  • Boat Bombings:
    • First vessel bombed had 11 people on it, highly unusual for drug runs, where fewer people means more room for cargo.
    • “Everyone with kind of knowledge of these sorts of operations said to me, very suspicious, very strange...” [06:46]
  • False Premises: Justification leaned on the fentanyl crisis, but:
    • Fentanyl doesn’t come through Venezuela or these maritime routes.
    • “The Coast Guard has never seized fentanyl in the Caribbean Sea. So right out of the gate, the pretense kind of unraveled.” [07:46]
  • “It had much more to do with the administration’s interest in flexing its muscles and in propping up a narrative of drugs overtaking the United States.” [07:30]
• Political Messaging Over Fact: The juxtaposition of this “drug war” with the U.S. pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández (convicted Honduran ex-president for major cocaine trafficking) exposes inconsistencies in policy. [08:51]

3. Political Strategy and Message to the Region

• Sending a Message:
  • Some insiders saw the strikes as a show of force—a warning to neighbors that the U.S. might take drastic action if crossed. [09:49]
• Why Not Target Mexico?:
  • Miller and others pushed the idea of bombing Mexican fentanyl labs, but it was rejected as diplomatically disastrous—so attention shifted to Venezuela as a “safer” target for militaristic messaging.
• Venezuela’s Unique Position:
  • “You had in Nicolás Maduro, an international pariah... the feeling was that if there was action taken against Venezuela... it would all align with the broader political agenda, and there’d be relatively little fallout...” [12:18]
  • Blitzer: “The bluntness and kind of myopia of that thinking is really unlike anything I’ve ever heard.” [12:54]

4. The Oil Dimension

• Trump’s Focus on Oil:
  • Trump announced plans for Venezuela to "give millions of barrels of its oil to the U.S." and discussed infrastructure with U.S. companies.
  • Blitzer doubts the viability: “These aspirations... this is the stuff of years and years and hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of investment. It’s all unproven, it’s all uncertain.” [13:41]
  • The practical U.S. need for Venezuelan oil is questionable (“It’s almost as though Trump is speaking of the United States several decades ago”).
  • Oil appears symbolic—a proxy for dominance rather than material necessity.

5. American Dominance & Ideological Rhetoric

• 'Dominance Play':
  • The Trump administration leans heavily into rhetoric about U.S. authority in the Western Hemisphere.
  • Example: Stephen Miller's comments about “the future of the free world” resting on unapologetic U.S. assertion—baffling even to mainstream media hosts (referencing Miller’s CNN appearance with Jake Tapper). [16:10]
  • Blitzer: “There isn’t a kind of geopolitical explanation, not even a legitimate pretense to how the administration is talking about all of this.” [17:12]
• Rubio’s Contrasting Tone:
  • At the post-capture press conference, Rubio characterized the operation as a "law enforcement operation”, while Trump described “the U.S. will be running Venezuela.” [19:10]

6. Risks, Humanitarian Concerns, and Uncertain Outcomes

• Regime Change’s Perverse Outcomes:
  • With Maduro ousted, Vice President Delsey Rodríguez—a key Maduro loyalist—now leads, still presiding over a regime apparatus antagonistic to both the opposition and the U.S.
  • Trump threatened: "if she doesn't do what we say, then she'll suffer a fate worse than Maduro's." [21:38]
• Escalating Crackdown:
  • Increased repression, use of paramilitaries ("colectivos"), and a broader mandate to target dissenters—result: “catastrophic for Venezuelans.” [22:55]
• U.S. Immigration Fallout:
  • 600,000+ Venezuelans in the U.S. on temporary protected status (TPS) or Biden-era parole now face heightened risk of deportation under a hardline Trump administration:
  • “What happens to them? … The Trump administration has already tried to cancel TPS for Venezuelans here.” [26:05]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On disinformation and toolkit of interventions:

  “If you believe this worldview… that Maduro was somehow behind this influx of immigrants… then you have a target that you yourself have written into the script.”
  — Jonathan Blitzer [04:29]

• On drug war pretext falling apart:

  “The Coast Guard has never seized fentanyl in the Caribbean Sea. So right out of the gate, the pretense kind of unraveled.”
  — Jonathan Blitzer [07:46]

• On pure power projection:

  “It had much more to do with the administration’s interest in flexing its muscles and in propping up a narrative.”
  — Jonathan Blitzer [07:31]

• On defective rationales for oil:

  “American oil companies… are motivated primarily by profits. And so if you’re interested… this is not a stable environment in which to be working right now.”
  — Jonathan Blitzer [15:18]

• On new, U.S.-backed leadership’s dilemma:

  “It is a head scratcher to then name his number two who participated in all of the illegitimacy of that regime to this new position of power.”
  — Jonathan Blitzer [21:00]

• On the future and U.S. demands:

  “What is it that Venezuela can offer to the United States, the current regime can offer the United States? What does it mean basically, to do what the US says? Because it frankly doesn’t seem clear to me that the US even has a concrete ask.”
  — Jonathan Blitzer [25:09]

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Topic / Quote | |----------|--------------------------------------------------------| | 00:04 | Introduction — U.S. operation in Venezuela | | 01:39 | The ideological motives—Rubio and U.S. priorities | | 04:18 | Immigration justifications and hardline influence | | 06:24 | Drug war pretexts and contradictions | | 09:49 | U.S. show-of-force and Venezuela as a testing ground | | 13:10 | Oil as motive: rhetoric vs. reality | | 15:32 | Rhetoric of U.S. dominance and global reaction | | 19:10 | Messaging shift post-Maduro capture — Rubio vs. Trump | | 20:36 | Risks of regime change, power dynamics after Maduro | | 23:54 | Forward-looking: Blitzer on volatility and immigration |

Conclusion

This episode provides a nuanced, in-depth examination of the U.S.’s abrupt intervention in Venezuela, exposing the conflicting rationales, the roles of ideology and political image, and the immense uncertainty for both Venezuela and Venezuelans in the U.S. Jonathan Blitzer’s analysis underscores the high stakes and confusion produced by the Trump administration’s mix of bluster, symbolic assertion, and policy inconsistencies. The fate of Venezuela, its regime, its people, and its migrants in the U.S. all remain deeply uncertain.

Listen to the full episode for more, and read Blitzer’s reporting in The New Yorker for ongoing coverage.