BREAKING: Bombshell NYT report exposes Rubio as the “viceroy” secretly running Venezuela
Marco Rubio is running an entire foreign country from his desk in Washington, and experts say it’s impeachable.
A bombshell New York Times report reveals that the Secretary of State has spent the last six months acting as the de facto “viceroy” of Venezuela, ever since Nicolás Maduro was seized by the American military in January and brought to the U.S. to face narco-terrorism charges.
According to more than a dozen officials in Washington and Caracas, Rubio effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources, and its government. He is deeply involved in the country’s day-to-day operations, holding sway over a sovereign nation in a way no American official has since Paul Bremer arrived in Baghdad to run occupied Iraq.
The arrangement is staggering. The U.S. Treasury collects the revenue from Venezuela’s exports, including its oil, then hands the money back through private banks with strict conditions set by Rubio’s team on what it can be spent on and by whom. The Times compared it to parents handing out allowances to children, leverage that acting President Delcy Rodríguez depends on just to pay workers and prop up the currency.
Columbia University political scientist Elizabeth Saunders called the revelations “insane,” as well as “derelict, unconscionable, and impeachable,” noting that the Secretary of State’s time is scarce, valuable, and not something that can be outsourced while he plays colonial administrator.
Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, put it bluntly: Trump has turned Venezuela into an effective U.S. colony, with Rubio as the viceroy, Washington controlling the country’s oil revenue, and democracy relegated to the distant future.
Historian Bradley Simpson said America is “literally back in the Dollar Diplomacy days of the 1910s,” when the U.S. invaded countries, seized their financial systems, and ran them as colonies. His verdict: flagrantly illegal and enormously corrupt.
Rubio spent years branding himself as a champion of Venezuelan democracy. Now the man who promised to free Venezuela from a dictator is personally deciding how its money gets spent, which companies get to operate there, and when, if ever, its people get to vote.