What Trump Wants in Venezuela
About this episode
New Yorker journalist Jonathan Blitzer helps Klein unpack the Jan. 3 capture of Nicolás Maduro. Blitzer traces Maduro from Chávez's charisma-free successor to a brutal consolidator who drove out nearly 8 million Venezuelans, and Trump's shift from first-term skeptic to second-term enthusiast. The operation emerged from converging factions: Marco Rubio's ideological hostility toward Venezuela and Cuba, Stephen Miller's immigration obsession — invoking the Alien Enemies Act and bombing boats to manufacture hostility justifying domestic crackdowns — and Trump's fixation on oil and hemispheric dominance. Blitzer calls the drug rationale pretext: fentanyl comes from Mexico and China, not Caribbean cocaine routes, and Trump's pardon of trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández voids the moral claim. They weigh bleak futures — a harder-line Delcy Rodríguez regime or a power vacuum of colectivos, soldiers, and rebels — and note the Iraq-like quality: no single reason sufficed, but together they pushed the decision over the line.