Why Delcy Rodriguez?

Reports that have trickled out over the past several days indicate that Trump decided to leave Delcy Rodriguez, who had been Maduro's vice president, in place following Maduro's removal. She was sworn in as "interim president" on Monday by her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, the President of the National Assembly. According to CBS News,

She quickly denounced the U.S. operation as a violation of the United Nations founding charter and a unilateral attempt to force regime change on Saturday, but soon adopted a more conciliatory tone.

In a social media post following a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Rodríguez called for "respectful international relations" between Caracas and Washington and extended an invite for "the U.S. government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation."

. . . Mr. Trump said Saturday that the U.S. had been in contact with Rodríguez and "she's essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again."

But in an interview with The Atlantic published on Sunday, he added a warning.

"If she doesn't do what's right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro," Mr. Trump said.

The latest information suggests things may be more intricate. According to this Wall Street Journal story behind a paywall,

A recent classified U.S. intelligence assessment determined top members of Nicolás Maduro’s regime—including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez—would be best positioned to lead a temporary government in Caracas and maintain near-term stability if the autocrat lost power, people familiar with the matter said.

This page excerpts a little more of the story:

The analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency was briefed to President Trump and shared with a small circle of senior administration officials, according to two of the people. It was a factor in Trump’s decision to back Maduro’s vice president instead of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, some of the people said.

The assessment provides insight into Trump’s decision not to support the opposition’s bid for control of Venezuela following the brazen U.S. military operation to capture Maduro last week and bring him to the U.S. for trial. As in his first term, Trump was convinced that near-term stability in Venezuela could be maintained only if Maduro’s replacement had the support of the country’s armed forces and other elites.

But it wasn't just the CIA. According to Bloomberg,

As the US threatened Nicolás Maduro’s grip on power in recent months, a cadre of executives, lawyers and investors tied to the oil industry made their case to anyone who would listen — the Trump administration, congressional aides: His familiar No. 2 Delcy Rodríguez should fill his shoes in Venezuela.

. . . President Donald Trump’s inner circle came to the same conclusion, though people familiar with the matter say they did so independently. Both groups believed that the vice president, long seen as a bridge between the government and private sector, could stabilize Venezuela’s oil-based economy and facilitate American business faster than leading dissident María Corina Machado could, said the people.

. . . , In a Bloomberg Television appearance Monday, Greylock Capital Management Chief Executive Hans Humes, who is part of the creditor committee of Venezuela’s sovereign debt, reiterated what some global oil executives have said in private regarding Rodríguez: “If you want somebody who can operate in reasonably OK conditions, get the person who operated in the worst conditions,” he said.

According to the AP,

In 2017, as political outsider Donald Trump headed to Washington, Delcy Rodríguez spotted an opening.

Then Venezuela’s foreign minister, Rodríguez directed Citgo — a subsidiary of the state oil company — to make a $500,000 donation to the president’s inauguration. With the socialist administration of Nicolas Maduro struggling to feed Venezuela, Rodríguez gambled on a deal that would have opened the door to American investment. Around the same time, she saw that Trump’s ex-campaign manager was hired as a lobbyist for Citgo, courted Republicans in Congress and tried to secure a meeting with the head of Exxon.

The charm offensive flopped. Within weeks of taking office, Trump, urged by then-Sen. Marco Rubio, made restoring Venezuela’s democracy his driving focus in response to Maduro’s crackdown on opponents.

. . . Rodríguez entered the leftist movement started by Hugo Chávez late — and on the coattails of her older brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who as head of the National Assembly swore her in as interim president Monday.

Tragedy during their childhood fed a hardened leftist outlook that would stick with the siblings throughout their lives. In 1976 — when, amid the Cold War, U.S. oil companies, American political spin doctors and Pentagon advisers exerted great influence in Venezuela — a little-known urban guerrilla group kidnapped a Midwestern businessman. Rodriguez’s father, a socialist leader, was picked up for questioning and died in custody.

While she eventually joined Chávez's staff, he also fired her.

Years later, in 2013, Maduro revived Rodríguez’s career after Chávez died of cancer and he took over.

A lawyer educated in Britain and France, Rodríguez speaks English and spent large amounts of time in the United States. That gave her an edge in the internal power struggles among Chavismo — the movement started by Chávez, whose many factions include democratic socialists, military hardliners who Chávez led in a 1992 coup attempt and corrupt actors, some with ties to drug trafficking.

. . . As she amassed more power, she crushed internal rivals. Among them: once powerful Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami, who was jailed in 2024 as part of an anti-corruption crackdown spearheaded by Rodríguez.

In her de-facto role as Venezuela’s chief operating officer, Rodríguez proved a more flexible, trustworthy partner than Maduro. Some have likened her to a sort of Venezuelan Deng Xiaoping — the architect of modern China.

Hans Humes, chief executive of Greylock Capital Management, said that experience will serve her well as she tries to jump-start the economy, unite Chavismo and shield Venezuela from stricter terms dictated by Trump. Imposing an opposition-led government right now, he said, could trigger bloodshed of the sort that ripped apart Iraq [.}

. . . We'vw seen how expats who have been outside of the country for too long think things should be the way it was before they left,” said Humes, who has met with Maduro as well as Rodríguez on several occasions. “You need people who know how to work with how things are not how they were.”

The upshot so far: Note that Trump is referring respectfully to "the interim Authorities in Venezuela", "interim president" being the title under which she was sworn in. It sounds very much to me as though this designation was agreed to before the raid. Beyond that, according to The Guardian,

Since April last year, according to reports, vice-president and now interim president Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge – the president of the Venezuelan national assembly – have been dealing secretly with Washington. This has reportedly been via that hotspot of informal diplomacy, Qatar.

We have yet to know the details. But the rumours are plausible that last week’s episode was staged to look outrageous, including Delcy Rodríguez’s initial condemnation of it as atrocious. President Nicolás Maduro was handed over to the Americans swiftly and peacefully. The only slip was Trump describing Delcy as “quite gracious” before she was hastily sworn into office soon after the raid. A more serious slip was his dismissal of the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, as lacking “the support within or the respect within the country”.

. . . After last weekend’s operation, people quite reasonably seek clarity of events and motive, but the truth is that international interventions by powerful states are drenched in hypocrisy. Their true purpose may be commercial gain or domestic glory – or to aid an ally. Or it may be just to sound good.

The Guardian characterized the Caracas raid as "a putsch. It was the militarised kidnap of one ruler to aid his more amenable deputy into power." We can grant tnis. The US has a long history of just this sort of thing. It does it best when it does it quickly and decisively, as it did in Iran in 1953.

Meanwhile,

On Monday, Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, was sworn in as president and a crackdown on support for Maduro’s ouster followed, including an order that police search for and arrest anyone supporting an armed attack by the U.S., The Washington Post reported.

She's rounding up the usual suspects -- after all, she seems to have worked behind the scenes to enable the whole show. I think Trump and his people are handling this brilliantly.