Rubio’s Political Future Could Hinge On Venezuela Campaign

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is hoping the Trump administration's pressure campaign against Venezuela breaks strongman Nicolás Maduro's will to stay in power.

But if the effort goes sideways, it could wreck Rubio’s presidential prospects instead — damaging his standing with key voters, especially in his home state of Florida.

Rubio, who also serves as acting national security adviser, is a main architect of the administration’s Venezuela strategy, which includes a massive U.S. military build-up in the Caribbean and deadly airstrikes on boats alleged to be ferrying drugs.

The stated goal of the campaign is to battle drug cartels, but U.S. officials and people close to the administration say Rubio and aides hope the effort will lead to Maduro’s fall from power.

President Donald Trump’s willingness to place so much pressure on Maduro is in some ways ideal for Rubio and other hawkish Floridians who have long loathed left-wing Latin American autocrats. But for Rubio, whom Trump has named as a possible 2028 successor alongside Vice President JD Vance, the operation carries special political risks.

If it fails to oust Maduro, Rubio could lose support among Latin American exiles, especially in Florida. If Maduro exits, but the administration’s actions leave Venezuelans in even more political and economic instability, it could hurt his standing with those same voters.

At the same time, if Rubio succeeds in ousting Maduro, it could damage his position with MAGA isolationists who want to limit U.S. adventurism abroad after the painful experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the MAGA base, “there’s no political appetite or political will for a regime change in Venezuela,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served at the State Department during the first Trump administration. While that group of voters may be willing to accept military action that has a specific purpose, it’s leery of more ill-defined U.S. interventions.

“As we saw with the Iran strikes, kicking ass is in the GOP’s DNA. People came around to that. But there’s still a large hesitancy about greater engagement with unclear motives,” Bartlett said.

Many GOP MAGA activists and commentators have long been suspicious of Rubio’s past hawkish views. But Rubio has shown tremendous ideological flexibility over the years, surviving longer than many expected in a Republican Party that has swung further and further right. That includes being less vocally supportive of U.S. actions— military or otherwise — overseas.

Since joining the Trump administration, Rubio has shocked many in the foreign policy establishment by dramatically reducing his promotion of human rights and certain democracy-building initiatives.

Still, some of his supporters have pointed to his consistency on Latin America’s left-leaning autocracies as a sign of Rubio’s longstanding convictions. The campaign against Venezuela, they argue, shows a steadfastness that they say Florida voters support.

“People are appreciative that Marco's working hard to get freedom and liberty in Latin America,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Rubio ally and former Florida governor. “He's doing exactly what he's always been doing.”

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is an important figure in South Florida’s Venezuelan and Cuban exile communities — who have helped him win past races for the Florida Legislature and the U.S. Senate. The crucial voting bloc has loudly called for Maduro’s ouster.

A successful overthrow of Maduro — even a negotiated exit — could boost Rubio’s standing in that community and a state that is an important battleground in GOP primaries. But if the military campaign fails to dislodge the dictator, Rubio could lose credibility with that constituency.

"If Maduro leaves, however it goes, it'll be good for Marco," said Eduardo Gamarra, a Florida International University professor who polls Florida's Hispanic voters. "What happens after is another question.”

If a proper transition to democracy takes place, Rubio’s standing could be further burnished. Venezuela already has a strong opposition movement whose candidate the U.S. and most international observers say won the country’s July 2024 presidential election.

Should another strongman take power, delaying the transition to democracy, that could undermine Rubio’s standing. Past analyses and wargames have also suggested that chaos could easily spread in the South American petrostate, especially if an insurgency materializes.

Rubio also needs to weigh how his standing with Trump will be affected if the president comes under fire for either backing down and leaving Maduro in place or pushing a campaign that leads to chaos in the region.

Trump has generally been supportive of Rubio, but that could change if the Venezuela effort damages the president.

“Rubio and the more ideological anti-communists in his inner circle have painted Trump into a corner, with a paper-thin counter-narcotics pretext and a massive military build-up that is beginning to look like a paper tiger if all it does is whack small boats,” said John Feeley, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly praised Rubio for playing “a key role in executing the foreign policy agenda that President Trump was overwhelmingly elected to implement, including securing the border, taking on the cartels, and eliminating the scourge of narcoterrorism that is killing thousands of Americans every year.”

“Secretary Rubio is completely focused on executing President Trump’s America First agenda," State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott added.

Rubio has long sought to push out Maduro. Trump despises Maduro as well, partly for devastating the once-prosperous South American country. Part of Rubio’s calculus is that toppling Maduro will weaken the regime in his ancestral homeland, Cuba.

During the first Trump administration, Rubio and Mauricio Claver-Carone, then the top White House aide on the Western Hemisphere, crafted a campaign of maximum economic pressure against Caracas. At that time, Venezuela’s National Assembly, then led by the opposition, was challenging Maduro’s consolidation of power.

The U.S. effort, which did not include a substantial military build-up or strikes, eventually fizzled out. It’s worth noting that Cuban-American and Venezuelan-American voters did not punish Rubio or Trump, although Maduro tightened his grip on power. Those voters kept Rubio in the Senate and backed Trump for the White House.

However, the second-term Trump approach to Venezuela and the broader region is more high-profile and high-stakes.

Rubio and his allies — with Trump’s blessing and the backing of influential White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — have crafted the campaign as being about fighting drug cartels, including ones Trump has designated as terrorist groups. The administration accuses Maduro of being a narco-trafficker and a terrorist, insisting, as they long have, that he’s not the country’s legitimate ruler.

The U.S. has already killed more than 80 people in nearly two dozen strikes on alleged drug boats, while providing little or no evidence that the people it struck were traffickers.

The U.S. military build-up is its largest in decades in the region and includes about 15,000 U.S. troops. A dozen F-35s, as well as AC-130Js capable of firing Hellfire missiles are now in Puerto Rico, much closer to the Venezuelan mainland.

The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and its three destroyer escorts arrived over the weekend in the Caribbean.

The grouping of 12 U.S. warships in the region carries hundreds of Marines along with helicopters and fighter planes. The ships are capable of launching Tomahawk missiles deep into Venezuelan territory.

All of those allocations have been closely watched in South Florida, per Frank Mora, who served as ambassador to the Organization of American States under the Biden administration.

"The policy has created the expectation that the outcome will be regime change," Mora said. "There will be some political consequences with a community that backed Trump in 2024 if that doesn't occur."

Framing the pressure campaign as an anti-drug operation has also given Trump some cover from MAGA critics who don’t believe the U.S. should pursue regime change but support the fight against drugs. Yet misgivings remain about Rubio’s aims with this Venezuela campaign among Trump backers who have long suspected he isn’t MAGA enough.

As determined as Rubio might be to see the operation through, Trump could prove to be the spoiler.

The president is wary of any entanglement that could involve U.S. boots on the ground in Venezuela, and he says he’s open to negotiating with Maduro. If Maduro makes Trump an offer he likes — such as promising a crackdown on drug boats and access to his country’s oil — the president might draw back and leave the strongman in charge. (It’s unclear if structured conversations between Washington and Caracas are currently occurring.)

Rubio has told allies he won’t run for president if Vance pursues the GOP nod in 2028. That said, if Rubio changes his mind, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s done so on whether to pursue a campaign.

Rubio, at a relatively young 54, has political options beyond 2028. He could run for Florida governor or return to the Senate — or run for president in 2032 if Democrats win the White House in 2028.

Some of Rubio’s non-interventionist critics say he may not feel the direct political consequences if a Venezuela operation destabilizes the South American country. That cost may be felt by Trump and Vance, especially if the vice president runs in 2028. Vance has defended the U.S. airstrikes on alleged drug boats.

“If the administration goes tits up because Marco Rubio spearheaded an invasion, that's JD Vance's problem,” said Curt Mills, the executive director of American Conservative magazine. “Rubio can just slip back into politics and pretend he wasn't involved in this and run again in 2032 or 2036.”

Paul McLeary contributed to this report.