By Robbie Gramer, Vera Bergengruen and Alex Leary

WASHINGTON -- Hours after U.S. special-operations forces captured the Venezuela strongman Nicolás Maduro, Marco Rubio issued a warning to the South American nation's allies: "Don't play games."

The secretary of state, standing alongside President Trump at Mar-a-Lago, warned that Cuba and other countries hostile to U.S. interests shouldn't test the president. "It's not going to turn out well," he said.

Rubio's remarks, delivered with Trump-like bravado, represented the culmination of a decadelong evolution from an establishment conservative to a MAGA disciple that landed him at the center of Trump's biggest foreign-policy gamble yet. The moment also marked a victory for the son of Cuban immigrants who has long sought to confront the hemisphere's strongmen.

Rubio is now saddled with perhaps the riskiest assignment of his career. He must keep the daring operation that deposed Maduro from turning into a calamitous nation-building mission that could threaten his political ambitions.

Rubio has emerged as the public face of Trump's Venezuela strategy, defending the president on television, working to reassure angry lawmakers of both parties and communicating Washington's demands to Maduro's successor, Delcy Rodríguez.

The secretary of state became the administration's main conduit to Rodríguez as the U.S. worked to establish an open line to Caracas in the raid's chaotic aftermath. He has conducted his several calls with Rodríguez in Spanish to limit the risk of miscommunication, according to administration officials.

In those calls, he has laid out White House demands, that Venezuela distance itself from Russia, Iran and China, halt the sale of oil to U.S. adversaries and agree to a range of favorable terms for American oil companies, according to people familiar with the discussions.

In his attempts to articulate the rationale behind the operation, Rubio has left lawmakers wanting more information -- and he has at times been contradicted by his boss. He hasn't publicly detailed how or whether the U.S. will push long term for a democratic transition in Venezuela or how long it will continue working with the security establishment that brutally enforced Maduro's rule.

On Sunday, Rubio appeared to walk back Trump's assertion that the U.S. would run the country, saying the administration is instead "running policy" using sanctions on oil shipments to and from Venezuela as leverage. Hours later, Trump offered a different assessment: "We're in charge."

Over the past year, Rubio has become one of the president's most-trusted advisers, according to administration officials, winning over Trump allies who once dismissed the former Florida senator and presidential candidate as a neoconservative and a globalist. It is a remarkable shift for Rubio, who once called Trump a "con artist" who was hijacking the conservative movement. Trump hit back at "little Marco."

Rubio, 54 years old, has White House ambitions of his own, according to his allies, and Trump has stoked competition between Rubio and Vice President JD Vance, who is seen as the MAGA movement's likely successor. Rubio has privately said he wouldn't challenge Vance for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, and people close to him have said he is open to running on the ticket, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

Rubio was one of the administration's most forceful proponents of removing Maduro from power, according to U.S. officials. Working with homeland security adviser Stephen Miller, Rubio cast Maduro's ouster as central to the priorities Trump campaigned on: curbing the flow of drugs into the U.S., deporting migrants and reasserting U.S. dominance in the region.

"Mr. President Donald Trump, watch out, because Mr. Rubio wants to stain your hands with blood," Maduro said in September.

Last weekend's incursion vaulted Rubio into viral stardom in Latin America, where AI-generated images depicted him as "Capitán América" and "San Rubio," his face emblazoned on a Catholic prayer candle. Right-wing influencers have widely shared video of Rubio singing along with a Pitbull song on New Year's Eve.

"He's finally achieving his life's work," said Carlos Trujillo, a Rubio ally who served as ambassador to the Organization of American States in the first Trump administration.

Rubio's ascendance in the MAGA world has infuriated some of his former colleagues in the Senate, which confirmed him as secretary of state by a 99-0 vote, including Democratic lawmakers who hoped he would restrain Trump. "I think he's had a full MAGA lobotomy," Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) said last year at a hearing.

Rubio has been focused on Venezuela for nearly two decades. In the Florida Legislature and later the U.S. Senate, he built his political brand by pushing U.S. pressure campaigns against authoritarian leftist governments in Latin America.

During Trump's first term, Rubio worked with the White House to orchestrate a diplomatic campaign to pressure Maduro from power after he was widely accused of stealing Venezuela's elections. The campaign failed.

The week after he won a second term, Trump announced Rubio as his pick to run the State Department. He became the first Hispanic American to hold the post.

Those who hoped Rubio would use his deep experience to reshape Trump's foreign policy have seen him instead embrace and implement the president's impulses with a zeal that has surprised even some allies.

Despite being a longtime advocate of foreign aid, Rubio backed the dismantling of USAID and adopted Trump's combative posture toward allies he once reassured. He has imposed visa bans on Europeans he accused of censoring free speech, threatened retaliation if Panama resisted Trump's demands over the canal and warned that the president's interest in annexing Greenland is "not a joke." The onetime architect of immigration overhaul has become an enforcer of Trump's agenda, negotiating a deal to imprison U.S. deportees in El Salvador.

"He has adopted the Trump transactional view of foreign policy, which is certainly not the view he took in the Senate," said Elliott Abrams, who served in foreign-policy positions in three Republican administrations, including for Trump.

Rubio has established a rapport with Trump, administration officials said. He spends little of his time at the State Department's headquarters in Foggy Bottom, instead working out of the White House within arm's reach of the president. The two share a love for sports and have common allies, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, a fellow Floridian.

In confronting Maduro, Rubio found an ally in Miller, who as a Senate aide attacked bipartisan immigration legislation Rubio helped craft. In 2023, Miller helped with a book launch for Rubio, and the two men developed a closer working relationship.

Rubio gave Latin America and the Caribbean unusual attention for a U.S. secretary of state, traveling to 10 countries in the region in his first year. Rubio's focus on Latin America put him on a collision course with Ric Grenell, a special envoy whom Trump had dispatched to Caracas to negotiate with Maduro, and who had been passed over for the secretary of state job.

Grenell favored a different approach, advocating for the White House to work with Maduro to secure the release of U.S. detainees, negotiate deportation flights and open Venezuela's oil-and-mineral reserves. Ultimately, Grenell was sidelined as the harder line that Rubio advocated for took shape, according to administration officials.

By late summer, senior officials were drawing up options to remove Maduro from power. Rubio began to meet regularly with Miller, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe and Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss the potential military operation.

When Maduro refused the offramps, Rubio and other senior aides concluded he wasn't willing to negotiate seriously, according to administration officials. After Maduro rejected an offer Dec. 23 to leave for exile in another country, Trump decided to launch the military operation.

As news and video footage first emerged of the raid in the early hours of Jan. 3, some Republican lawmakers who have criticized what they call presidential overreach in foreign wars voiced apprehension about the capture of a foreign leader. Rubio quickly intervened.

In a social-media post shortly after 3 a.m., Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah questioned "what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action."

At roughly 5 a.m., Rubio called Lee directly to address his concerns. By that evening, Lee was posting memes of Rubio in Latin American military regalia.

Write to Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com, Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com and Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 07, 2026 05:30 ET (10:30 GMT)

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