South Florida Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz says the Trump administration is lacking a substantive plan for a democratic transition in Venezuela following this month's ouster of authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro.
In an interview Thursday with NBC's Meet the Press NOW, Wasserman Schultz said the administration is allowing acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez — a former top official under Maduro — to run the country.
"The new sheriff is the same as the old sheriff," Wasserman Schultz said. "It is just a woman instead of a man."
The U.S. military captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on Jan. 3, and spirited them out of the country to face drug trafficking charges in the United States.
“[Trump] appears to be throwing in his lot with Delcy Rodríguez,” said Wasserman Schultz, whose congressional district includes one of the largest Venezuelan communities in the U.S.
“She is essentially Maduro’s puppet... this is basically swapping the head of one snake for another," she said.
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" What we need is a transition to democracy," said Wasserman Schultz.
Trump has raised doubts about his stated commitment to backing democratic rule in Venezuela, giving no timetable on when elections might be held.
Trump has said it would be difficult for opposition leader Maria Corina Machado — the longtime face of the fight for democracy in Venezuela — to lead her country because she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country."
Without a clear process for free elections, said Wasserman Schultz, the regime’s "cronies" will forever remain in power, continuing to repress its citizens.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said on Friday she’s confident of her country’s eventual transition to democracy after the U.S. military ousted former President Nicolás Maduro.
But she acknowledged the challenge of holding free elections after decades of autocratic rule and declined to set any timetable. When pressed, she also took pains to avoid giving any details on her plans to return home, saying only that she would return “as soon as possible.”
Speaking to reporters at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, Machado said she was “profoundly, profoundly confident that we will have an orderly transition” to democracy that would also transform Venezuela's self-proclaimed socialist government long hostile to the U.S. into a strong U.S. ally.
She dismissed the perception that, in choosing to work with Rodríguez, Trump had snubbed her opposition movement, whose candidate was widely believed to have beaten Maduro in the 2024 presidential election.
“This has nothing to do with a tension or decision between Delcy Rodríguez and myself,” she said, but avoided elaborating in favor of more general assertions about her party's popular mandate and the government's dismal human rights record.
“The only thing they have is terror,” she said of Maduro's government.
But she also acknowledged “the difficulty of destroying a 27-year structure allied with the Russians and the Iranians.”
“We are facing challenging times ahead,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
