The Day After: Trump Advisors and Venezuela Opposition Leaders Plan for Maduro’s Departure

Time ^ | Dec 11, 2025 11:16 AM CT | Brian Bennett

[E. Pluribus Unum]

In the 1980s, the U.S. negotiated the exile of world leaders like Haiti’s Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier to France and Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines to Hawaii.

Now, President Donald Trump wants Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro out of power. Maduro’s “days are numbered,” Trump told Politico in an interview released on Dec. 9. His Administration considers Maduro the head of a government-sponsored cocaine smuggling syndicate. Since September, he’s blown up 22 alleged drug boats off Venezuela’s coastline, parked a carrier strike group in the Caribbean, and flown F/A-18 attack jets near Venezuela’s border. On Wednesday, the U.S. seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s border. 

The escalating military campaign has raised questions about the prospects of Maduro’s exit after 12 years in power, and what would happen to Venezuela’s 29 million people the day after. The gargantuan task of taking the reins of Venezuela’s government, shifting it away from a brutal dictatorship and keeping the peace is expected to largely fall to the opposition group led by Maria Corina Machado.

Machado has vocally supported Trump’s military campaign that’s targeting her country, even as Trump’s deadly strikes on alleged drug boats are seen as violating the laws of warfare. On Wednesday, after nearly a year in hiding, Machado appeared in public in Oslo, hours after her daughter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf. In an interview with the BBC, Machado didn’t directly answer when asked if she would support a U.S. military strike on Venezuelan soil. "We didn't want a war, we didn't look for it,” she said. “It was Maduro who declared war on the Venezuelan people.”

Venezuela’s opposition has been planning for years to lead a transitional government in the event of Maduro’s ouster, a longtime Venezuelan democracy advocate who is close to Machado tells TIME. But their...

---

TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: 2026wipeout; 2028wipeout; caribbean; frneocons; frwarlovers; maduro; venezuela

[dljordan]

Maybe we can get the CIA to set up a temporary government. :)

[Owen]

This reads exactly like all the articles of this entire recent summer about how the Coalition of the Willing was allocating which country would put how many troops into Ukraine — just as soon as there is a ceasefire.

[frank ballenger]

Maduro, microphone in hand:
🎤
“Just before I take off I have been asked to sing a couple of encores of your favorites.”

Crowd: “Don’t go. Give us some Carpenters and Wayne Newton first. And give us Imagine again. We love you.”

Guy in back shouts: “What the World Needs Now is Love”.

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

[Disambiguator]

Or someone in the crowd holding a sign that says “Freebird.”

[frank ballenger]

Ha.

That’s the part where he loosens his tie and does the songs that bring it all home to the audience.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Getting rid of Maduro is only part of it. They’re going to need our help kicking out all the Cuban “advisors” that are embedded all over the country and basically running the show. My understanding is that there are thousands of them.