https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/01\/08\/marco-rubio-venezuela-senate-00715617<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“As senators woke up Saturday with questions on President Donald Trump\u2019s audacious decision to order the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, one of their old colleagues was ready with answers.
\nSecretary of State Marco Rubio worked the phones in the wee hours of the morning and, in the days since, has played an outsize role in not only formulating the administration\u2019s strategy in Venezuela but explaining it to skeptical lawmakers wary of a protracted military commitment.<\/p>\n
That outreach has been to his former Republican colleagues as well as Democrats, including those who see him as a rare Trump official with whom they can maintain a trusted and respectful relationship amid profound policy disputes.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
\u201cMarco has been evangelical on Latin America for a long time, for a long time \u2014 I mean, he\u2019s, you know, a pretty classic neocon who believes that America will generally be greeted as liberators,\u201d said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), another former Foreign Relations colleague. \u201cI didn\u2019t vote for him because I thought he was going to suddenly agree with me on the importance of military restraint overseas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Kaine, \u201cAt the end of the day, he\u2019s going to do what Trump tells him to do.\u201d”<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/01\/08\/marco-rubio-venezuela-senate-00715617<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[542,221,659,1665,1700,170,741],"class_list":["post-21005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-congress","tag-donald-trump","tag-latin-america","tag-marco-rubio","tag-south-america","tag-trump","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21005"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21007,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21005\/revisions\/21007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}