By Jennifer Hansler, CNN
(CNN) — Tensions are escalating between Washington and Caracas as the Trump administration has increasingly signaled it could use military means to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power.
US President Donald Trump has not explicitly said he is trying to overthrow Maduro. However, it would not be the first time Trump or members of his cabinet have sought to see a change in leadership in Caracas.
During his first term, Trump recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the president of Venezuela after Maduro was inaugurated for a second term that the US, dozens of other countries, and the Venezuelan opposition had decried as illegitimate.
The January 2019 recognition set off a rapid diplomatic breakdown between Washington and Caracas.
Maduro, accusing the US of backing a coup, cut diplomatic ties with the administration, closed Venezuela’s embassy and all of its consulates in the United States, and issued an ultimatum for US personnel to leave Venezuela. Hours later, the US State Department ordered all of its non-emergency diplomats out of the country. Less than two months later, the US withdrew the rest of its diplomats and suspended operations at its embassy in Caracas.
The administration imposed a flurry of sanctions on the Maduro regime during the first term. In 2020, Trump’s Justice Department charged Maduro was engaging in “narco-terrorism” and levied a $15 million bounty for the arrest of the Venezuelan leader.
In January 2019, then-national security adviser John Bolton said that “all options” were on the table, including military force.
Now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is seen as the key architect of the Trump administration’s Venezuela policy, has long denounced the Maduro regime and backed the Venezuelan opposition.
In April 2019, during his time as a Florida senator, Rubio called the Maduro government “a transnational criminal group” and said “the crisis” in the country wasn’t “an attempt to bring about ‘regime change’ or interfere in the internal affairs of another country,” but rather about “serious threats to our national security posed by drug trafficking” and Russian and Iranian influence.
Maduro and “his cronies aren’t politicians motivated by the national interests of a country, they are gangsters motivated by a desire to keep their illegal sources of income,” Rubio posted on X at the time. “We must consider every option available to us to bring to an end their lucrative criminal activities.”
More than six years later, much appears the same.
Maduro has remained in power, once again claiming victory in an election in 2024 denounced by the international community as illegitimate.
Although there has been limited engagement between Maduro’s and Trump’s governments, formal diplomatic ties remain severed.
However, the threat of military force is far more present.The Trump administration has said its strategy is one of countering narco-trafficking, but some officials have acknowledged that it could also serve as a means to dislodge Maduro from power.
The US has deployed scores of military assets to the Caribbean and carried out deadly military strikes on at least five alleged drug boats with ties to cartels and criminal organizations the administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
The Trump administration has increased the bounty on Maduro to $50 million.
On Wednesday, Trump confirmed he had authorized the CIA to operate inside of Venezuela, but he said it was to counter drug smuggling.
“We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you get to see that, but we’re going to stop them by land also,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
“President Trump believes that Nicholas Maduro is an illegitimate President leading an illegitimate regime that has been trafficking drugs to the United States of America for far too long, and we’re not going to tolerate it,” White House press secretary Karoline Levitt said Thursday.
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