“[Delcy] Rodríguez has talked to Secretary Rubio and is essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”

Mar-a-Lago press conference following the Maduro capture

Within hours of Trump's press conference, Delcy Rodríguez herself publicly contradicted him. Speaking on Venezuelan state television, Rodríguez denounced the U.S. military operation as 'brutal aggression' and demanded Nicolás Maduro's immediate release, the opposite of someone 'essentially willing' to carry out Washington's agenda. PolitiFact's fact-check of the January 3, 2026 Mar-a-Lago press conference, published by PBS News and Al Jazeera, directly juxtaposed Trump's characterization with Rodríguez's actual public statement. Trump offered no evidence of any agreement, and Rodríguez's own broadcast remarks are the documentary record of her position.

Rodríguez, who was sworn in as interim president after Maduro's capture, is a longtime Maduro loyalist who served as his vice president. Her on-camera condemnation of the operation that installed her makes Trump's claim that she stood ready to 'make Venezuela great again' contradicted by the only public statement she had made on the matter at the time. "Rodríguez criticized the U.S. military action as 'brutal aggression' on state television and called for Maduro's immediate release." — PolitiFact, fact-checking the Mar-a-Lago press conference, January 3-4, 2026