When political outsider Donald Trump headed to Washington in 2017, Delcy Rodríguez spotted an opportunity.
Then-Venezuela Foreign Minister Rodriguez directed Citgo, a subsidiary of the state-owned oil company Donated $500,000 to the Presidential Inauguration. As Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government struggles to feed Venezuela, Rodriguez is betting on a deal that would open the door to U.S. investment. Around the same time, she watched as Trump’s former campaign manager was hired as a lobbyist for Citgo, courting Republicans in Congress and trying to gain support. Meet the President of ExxonMobil.
The charm offensive failed. Just weeks after taking office, Trump, at the urging of then-Sen. Marco Rubio has made restoring democracy in Venezuela his main focus in response to Maduro’s crackdown on the opposition. But the effort did bear fruit for Rodriguez, making her a well-known figure in American business and politics and paving the way for her own rise.
“She was a theoretician but also a pragmatic person,” said Lee McClenny, a retired foreign service officer who served as the top U.S. diplomat in Caracas during Rodriguez’s outreach. “She knows Venezuela needs to find a way to revive its moribund oil economy and seems willing to work with the Trump administration to do that.”
Nearly a decade later, as Venezuela’s interim president, Rodriguez’s message — that Venezuela is open for business — appears to have won over Trump. in the days after that Maduro’s amazing snap On Saturday, he alternately praised Rodriguez as a “benevolent” U.S. partner while threatening that she would face a similar fate to her former boss if she did not take control of the ruling party and provide help to the United States. “Full access” to the country’s vast oil reserves. One thing neither mentioned was elections, which the constitution requires must be held within 30 days of the permanent vacancy of the presidential office.
The account of Rodriguez’s political rise is drawn from interviews with 10 former U.S. and Venezuelan officials and businessmen from both countries who had extensive dealings with Rodriguez, some of whom had known her since childhood. Most spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, and they almost universally described the man as a bookish smart guy who was sometimes charming but above all a ruthless operator who brooked no dissent. Rodriguez did not respond to an interview request from The Associated Press.
Father’s murder hardens left-wing views
Rodriguez later joined the left-wing movement started by Hugo Chávez and was supported by her brother Jorge Rodriguez, who was sworn in as interim president on Monday as speaker of the National Assembly.
Childhood tragedy fueled their staunchly left-wing views, which would follow the siblings throughout their lives. In 1976, during the Cold War, American oil companies, American political opinion experts 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 taken for questioning and died in custody.
McClenney remembers Rodriguez bringing up the murder in their meetings and bitterly blaming America for losing his father when he was just 7 years old. The crime radicalized another figure on the left at the time: Maduro.
Years later, Jorge Rodríguez became a top electoral official under Chávez while simultaneously securing a position in the presidential office for his sister.
But she made slow progress at first and clashed with colleagues, who viewed her as an arrogant know-it-all.
In 2006, Chavez kicked her off the presidential plane during a whirlwind international trip and ordered her to fly home alone from Moscow, according to two former officials who were traveling with him. Chavez was upset because the delegation’s meeting schedule was disrupted, sparking a feud with Rodriguez, who was in charge of the agenda.
“It was painful to see the way Chavez talked about her,” one former official said. “He would never speak ill of a woman, but all the way home he kept calling her conceited, arrogant and incompetent.”
She was fired days later and never had another high-profile role with Chavez.
Political renaissance and surge in power under Maduro
Years later, in 2013, after Chavez died of cancer and took over, Maduro revived Rodriguez’s career.
Rodriguez is a lawyer educated in England and France, speaks English, and has spent considerable time in the United States. This gave her an advantage in the power struggles within the Chavez movement. The Chavez movement was founded by Chávez, and its many factions include democratic socialists, military hardliners led by Chávez in the 1992 coup, and corrupt elements, some of whom have links to drug trafficking.
Rodriguez’s more worldly views and refined tastes also made her a favorite of the so-called “oligarchs” – those who made fortunes during Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution. One of those insiders, media mogul Raul Gorrín, worked closely with Rodriguez’s back channels in an effort to repair relations with the first Trump administration and helped organize a secret visit Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions traveled to Caracas to meet with Maduro in April 2018. Months later, U.S. federal prosecutors unsealed the first case Two counts of money laundering against red.
After Maduro promoted Rodriguez to vice president in 2018, she gained control of large swaths of the region Venezuela’s oil economy. To help manage the petro-state, she hired foreign consultants with experience in global markets. Among them are Ecuador’s two former finance ministers, who helped manage a dollarized, export-oriented economy under leftist Rafael Correa. Another key partner is French lawyer David Syed, who has spent years trying to renegotiate Venezuela’s foreign debt in the face of tough U.S. sanctions that have left Wall Street investors unable to be repaid.
“She sacrificed her personal life for a political career,” said a former friend.
As she amassed more power, she overwhelmed internal rivals. They include the once-powerful oil minister Tareck El Aissami, who was jailed in 2024 in an anti-corruption crackdown spearheaded by Rodriguez.
During his time as Venezuela’s chief operating officer, Rodriguez proved to be a more flexible and trustworthy partner than Maduro. Some liken her to Venezuela’s Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern China.
Hans Humes, chief executive of Greylock Capital Management, said the experience will serve her well as she tries to boost the economy, unite Chavismo and protect Venezuela from tougher terms imposed by Trump. He said establishing an opposition-led government now could spark bloodshed like the bloodshed that tore Iraq after U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein and formed an interim government that included many leaders who had been in exile for years.
“We’ve seen how foreigners who have been abroad for too long think things should be the way they were before they left,” said Humes, who has met with Maduro and Rodriguez on several occasions. “You need people who know how to handle situations where things are different than they were.”
Democracy delayed?
Rodriguez’s more pragmatic leadership style brings uncertainty to Venezuela’s democracy.
Speaking after Maduro’s arrest, Trump said Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Colina Machado lacked “respect” in governing Venezuela even though her handpicked candidate won a landslide victory in the 2024 presidential election that the United States and other governments say was stolen from Maduro.
Elliott Abrams, who served as Venezuela’s special envoy during Trump’s first administration, said the president’s goal of driving criminal gangs, drug traffickers and Middle Eastern terrorists out of the Western Hemisphere would be impossible while Chavista factions share power.
“Nothing Trump has said indicates that his administration is considering a quick transition from Delsey. No one is talking about an election,” Abrams said. “If they think Delsey is in control, they’re totally wrong.”