The US are either trying to stir the pot and get a civil war going, or they really cut a deal with Rodriguez and she’s just playing her part in consolidating power then selling off.

I’d rather believe the former, than the latter, considering that Rodriguez’s father was “disappeared” by a US puppet regime in Venezuela when she was younger.

Trump has exaggerated or outright lied about the outcome of virtually every military and diplomatic action taken by his administration, since he got inaugurated. He’s desperate for both a personal and a national win. Similarly to the Iranian bombing, he’s done a show of force and is using it to declare victory. He’s likely going to withdraw the fleet from Venezuela’s coast now, and will keep milking “all the beautiful things” he has planned for Venezuela, in the coming months. However, not much else is going to happen. Dissing Corina Machiado probably means he’s not interested in supporting a puppet regime, or he realizes that doing so would be extremely expensive and likely to fail. If the US uses further military force, then the situation will very likely blow up in unexpected ways. Unfortunately, that means that there’s not much hope for releasing Maduro (through diplomacy or war), and he will probably die in a US prison cell, unless China and Russia intervene.

We should be keeping a very close eye on how the Venezuelan government proceeds from now, as that will tell us whether Trump actually cut a deal or not.

Furthermore, we should also be keeping a close eye on what Russia and China will be doing about Venezuela. I find that their responses so far have been slow (to put it mildly) and disappointingly lukewarm. This is not uncharacteristic of them, but I still fear that they might have cut a deal with Trump, especially in exchange for Ukraine and Taiwan.

Although, the night before Maduro was kidnapped, he was meeting at the presidential palace with Chinese delegates, so I’m much less inclined to believe that China cut a deal with Trump, compared to Russia.