Marco Rubio Is Leading Trump’s Pressure Campaign Against Venezuela

In recent months, Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who served as the Republican senator from Florida from 2011 to 2025, has been quietly discussing a more aggressive stance on the Maduro regime with other senior administration officials, the people said. Trump has long been critical of Maduro and has tasked Rubio, along with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pamela Bondi with implementing the pressure campaign, said one senior administration official.

He has taken an unusually domestic focus for a secretary of state: striking deportation deals, revoking visas on ideological grounds and encouraging the use of lethal force against “narco-terrorists” he accuses of waging war against Americans.

“The President is the one who drives and determines our foreign policy,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott. “It is the job of the cabinet to implement. Secretary Rubio is honored to be a part of the President’s team.”

The U.S. has ramped up lethal strikes on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean over recent weeks and has deployed nuclear-capable B-52 bombers just off Venezuela’s shores. The bombers are conducting training flights as part of a continuing exercise but are also collecting intelligence and serve as a show of force, according to another U.S. official.

The pressure campaign against Maduro is at the center of a “Venn diagram of interest” among Trump’s top lieutenants, one of the people said. Wiles and Bondi are from Florida, where anti-Maduro sentiment is strong among Republicans. In August, Bondi doubled the U.S.’s bounty on Maduro to $50 million, accusing him of working with criminal organizations such as Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel.

“Nicolás Maduro is a narco-terrorist and fugitive from American justice who has deputized terrorist organizations to stay in power. His reign will not last forever,” Bondi said through a spokesman.

Miller is also an integral player in the discussions, the people said. For Miller, the campaign is a way to halt the flow of drugs into the U.S. and potentially enable the deportation of more immigrants who are living in the country illegally, according to one person.

Trump, who also tried to oust Maduro during his first administration, sees the more aggressive campaign as a foreign-policy win that could be an economic boon for the U.S. given Venezuela’s vast reserves of oil and other natural resources. He also sees Maduro’s removal as a domestic-policy win, as it would result in fewer drugs coming into the U.S., fewer drug-related deaths and safer communities, the senior administration official said.

The campaign has a heavy military element. The Pentagon has moved eight Navy warships, an attack submarine, F-35B jet fighters, P-8 Poseidon spy planes and MQ-9 Reaper drones into the region. In recent weeks, the department also deployed the elite special operations forces, including the Army’s secretive 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the “Night Stalkers,” near Venezuela’s shores for training.

In response to the U.S. military buildup, Venezuela is moving troops into position and mobilizing its militia.

 

“From the secretary of state’s perspective, it’s extremely smart because if his objective is ultimately continuing to pressure Maduro, justifying it in a way that the MAGA base can understand, is incredibly important,” said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Rubio has framed the pressure campaign as “tantamount to defending the homeland, because [Maduro] is such a cancer in the Western Hemisphere,” Berg said. 

In his unusual double role as Trump’s top diplomat and national security adviser, Rubio has been able to execute quickly on policies he has been advocating for over a decade. After years in the procedural grind of Capitol Hill, he has found the authority to move quickly “freeing,” says a senior adviser.

But he has also been laying the groundwork for an escalating pressure campaign on Maduro since he arrived at the State Department in January. His inaugural trip was a five-country spin through Central America and the Caribbean, an unusual region for America’s top diplomat. Behind closed doors, he often spoke to foreign officials in Spanish and made it clear that the Trump administration would reward allies in the region if they aligned with the U.S.

“One of my priorities is to ensure that U.S. foreign policy sends a signal that it’s better to be a friend than an enemy,” he said during a stop in Costa Rica in February where he called Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua “enemies of humanity.”

“It’s better to be an ally than a troublemaker,” he said.