{"id":7000,"date":"2026-01-16T15:09:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T15:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/?p=7000"},"modified":"2026-01-16T15:09:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T15:09:25","slug":"cia-director-ratcliffe-meets-with-venezuelas-rodriguez-in-caracas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/2026\/01\/16\/cia-director-ratcliffe-meets-with-venezuelas-rodriguez-in-caracas\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA director Ratcliffe meets with Venezuela’s Rodriguez in Caracas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Link: Link<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is about a meeting that took place between CIA director John Ratcliffe with Interim President Delcy Rodriguez. John Ratcliffe was directed by US President Donald Trump to discuss the logistics of what Delcy intends to do with her power. She denies any further expansion of the drug trafficking gangs like TDA. Both Trump and Rodriguez have previously made negative statements about the others regime with Trump believing opposition Maria Machado won the election in 2024 and Rodriguez joining in the protests of bringing former leader Nicolas Maduro back to Venezuela. Both Ratcliffe and Rodriguez have publicly said that they believe the meeting was a success and they believe that the Trump administration and the Rodriguez administration are starting to see eye to eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is definitely a race for presidency occurring in Venezuela right now, and it seems like the two sides think that the winner is whoever can suck up to the United States the most, with Rodriguez taking back all the wrong she said about Trump and the US and Machado giving Trump the Nobel peace prize. This means that both competitors see the power that President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has over their own country so they only way to obtain stable power is through them. I do think that its going to be a very difficult decision for the president because although if it was a simple side to side split then he would most likely go with Machado as she is pro-democratic. But because Rodriguez is already in power it’s going to make getting Machado in office very difficult so Trump might just go for the approach of trying to manipulate Rodriguez to act however he wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe that the US will find a way to get Machado into office, whether that be with use of smart power, or diplomacy, or just plain out attack, less likely. Because it is so valuable to have a democratic leader in a very non democratic area that’s located in the US’ sphere of influence because of two reasons. It will allow Trump to control Venezuela easier which is important because if you look at Cuba during the 60s you can see how an opposing regime can affect an entire region, and with Rodriguez in office you will always have to watch your back because even if she makes democratic claims she will always be Nicolas Maduro’s right hand women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ratcliffe and Trump were utilizing the niche of soft power called co-option. They are taking advantage of Venezuela’s weak period to try and make it seem like they should do whatever the US wants because we are Venezuela’s only ticket out of this time of hardship, which is true to an extent but there are also other ways of handling the situation without Venezuela basically becoming the 51st state. Rodriguez is equally using soft power to attempt to make her regime look like the higher quality than her opponents to eventually get the power she wants. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Link: Link This article is about a meeting that took place between CIA director John Ratcliffe with Interim President Delcy Rodriguez. John Ratcliffe was directed by US President Donald Trump to discuss the logistics of what Delcy intends to do with her power. She denies any further expansion of the drug trafficking gangs like TDA. Both Trump and Rodriguez have… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":326,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/326"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7003,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000\/revisions\/7003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}