Politics

Rubio’s 2028 profile rises with Venezuela — and so do his risks

Published

6 months ago

January 10, 2026

Donald Trump has handed Marco Rubio the keys to Venezuela. It could make or break the secretary of State should he run for president in 2028.

Rubio has quickly emerged as the administration’s point person on Venezuela, the man standing behind the president as he declared “we’re going to run the country.” Rubio plastered his face across the Sunday news shows to explain the operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, then went on in the days after to defend it in briefings to Congress.

Photoshopped memes are now circulating of Rubio sporting a sash with the national colors of Venezuela, like those the country’s presidents wear. Rubio is in on the joke, taking to X on Thursday to humorously knock down “rumors” that he was “a candidate for the currently vacant HC and GM positions with the Miami Dolphins.”

But it’s the American presidency that could be at stake.

“Venezuela could make him president — or ensure that he never is,” said Mark McKinnon, a longtime political adviser and former aide to President George W. Bush.

Blue Light News reported in November that Rubio privately had said that he’d back JD Vance for president if he runs in 2028, which Rubio publicly confirmed to Vanity Fair.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a press conference President Donald Trump and other officials listen at Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Jan. 3.

“If JD Vance runs for president, he’s going to be our nominee, and I’ll be one of the first people to support him,” Rubio told Vanity Fair, a line his aides pointed Blue Light News to when asked for comment for this story.

Few political strategists, however, are buying that line, and Rubio has changed his mind on not running for office before.

“He’s quietly stacking internal GOP capital, from what I hear from people in my circles within the Republican Party,” said Buzz Jacobs, senior adviser on Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “As of today, could Marco Rubio enter the presidential race and be very competitive, even against the vice president? I think the answer is undeniably yes.”

Rubio has spent much of his career railing against Venezuela’s socialist dictatorship, a close ally of the regime in Cuba, his parents’ homeland.

“Their experience with the evils of socialism and communism is in his DNA,” said Cesar Conda, Rubio’s first Senate chief of staff. “It guides his world view.”

Rubio ran against Trump for the presidency in 2016; he called Trump a “con artist.” But since Trump won and effectively commandeered the Republican Party, Rubio has adjusted many of his policy positions and his rhetoric. He has surrounded himself with America First staffers and advisers who help push forward the Trump administration’s muscular foreign policy.

Smoke rises from Fort Tiuna, the main military garrison in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 3, after the U.S. strikes.

Trump shortlisted him for the vice presidency in 2024, but Rubio ended up at the State Department instead. To the surprise of many political observers, Rubio fell into lockstep with Trump on issues many thought would be a red line for him. He enthusiastically shut down pathways for refugees and ended funding for democracy and human rights programs, causes he once championed. Taking such steps helped him stay in Trump’s good graces, enough so that the president named him acting national security adviser as well.

Trump has often cozied up to autocrats, but he has never liked Maduro. In recent days, he made it clear he sees Venezuela as a source of oil and other natural resources for the U.S. to exploit. Rubio has long painted Maduro as a thug who thwarted democracy.

For much of this year, both men pushed the idea that Maduro had to be dealt with, alleging he led a drug cartel killing Americans with its products. They got their wish: Maduro is now in U.S. custody in New York.

Rubio, then a presidential candidate, greets guests at a campaign rally in Alabama in 2016.

But the South American country’s fate is far from clear. Many of Maduro’s cronies remain in power, even though Trump insists that they will do what the U.S. demands. Trump told the New York Times this week that the U.S. could be running Venezuela for years.

“I understand that in this cycle and society we now live in, everyone wants instant outcomes. They want it to happen overnight,” Rubio told reporters after briefing the Senate Wednesday. “It’s not going to work that way.”

Members of Congress were not notified of the Maduro operation in advance, and many are fuming about what they say is a continued lack of transparency.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Rubio’s briefing “raised more questions than it answered.”

“It’s time to let the public in on this, and let the public see what’s at stake,” said Kaine, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Venezuela is unlikely to be a quick or easy fix. The country is roughly twice the size of California, with a shattered economy, a varied landscape, and many armed groups in a population of 30 million. The Maduro cronies left behind have their own internal rivalries, and some control military forces.

Despite Trump and Rubio’s warnings to the remaining members of the regime to fall in line and capitulate to U.S. demands, it’s possible the Venezuelan state could collapse.

And it may not end with Venezuela: Rubio and Trump are warning other countries to get in line with what the U.S. wants from them, including Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela.

“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I would be concerned, at least a little bit,” Rubio said in a Saturday press conference just hours after the Venezuela operation.

The potential chaos ahead could leave Rubio on the outs with key GOP voting blocs. Those include anti-interventionist conservatives, who remain wary of Rubio’s neoconservative instincts, and Republican Latino voters, especially in Florida, some who desperately want regime change in the nations their families fled and others who are frustrated by the region’s instability.

People react to the news of the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Doral, Florida, on Jan. 3.

Then, of course, there’s the general public, a good chunk of whom want the U.S. to avoid another repeat of Iraq and Afghanistan. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after the raid, 72 percent of Americans are concerned the U.S. will get “too involved” in Venezuela.

As Rubio has become the face of the effort, Vance, a potential rival in 2028, has largely kept away from it. He was not at the makeshift Mar-a-Lago situation room while the raid unfolded on Saturday, a fact his spokesperson attributed to concern “a late-night motorcade movement … may tip off the Venezuelans.” Vance was “deeply integrated in the process and planning of the Venezuela strikes and Maduro’s arrest,” the spokesperson said.

Rubio also has to consider some practical matters: If he wants to run for president, he will need to raise money, build a campaign infrastructure and take all the other steps needed before the GOP primary kicks into full gear.

That’s especially difficult to do while secretary of State, a position that traditionally has stayed away from the partisan domestic scene. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been out of the Obama administration for more than a year before she publicly moved toward a presidential campaign.

Rubio would likely have to leave the administration after another year or so to have time for all the logistics, as jostling for the 2028 presidential campaign will kick off by early next year.

Rubio arrives to brief members of Congress on Capitol Hill, on Jan. 5.

Most U.S. presidential elections don’t hinge on foreign policy, though candidates from John McCain back to Hubert Humphrey have been damaged by their party’s foreign adventurism. Still, the first year of Trump’s second term has been surprisingly heavy on foreign policy — and any Republican running in 2028 will likely have to grapple with the results of Trump’s bold international moves.

“The MAGA base is very loyal to Trump. It will watch if people are disrespectful to him,” said Alex Gray, a former National Security Council official during the first Trump administration.

There are also factions of the GOP — including members of the Cuban and Venezuelan diasporas — who will stand by hardline moves against the regimes there no matter what the cost. Mike Madrid, a GOP strategist, said he has heard from many Latino Republicans who are impressed by how much Trump relies on Rubio. Whenever Trump needs “an adult in the room, he seems to look towards Marco’s leadership,” Madrid said.

But Madrid and other party strategists aren’t about to start taking bets on the GOP primary yet. After all, the situation in Venezuela is just one of multiple Trump foreign policy adventures that could turn into quagmires.

For Rubio in particular, “what may look like the president knighting him as a sort of competent successor may actually, in fact, be him carrying all the weight of the unpopular actions of the president in a couple of years,” Madrid said. “There’s a greater likelihood of that than not.”

Politics

Capitol agenda: House GOP agenda gets tenuous Trump lifeline

Published

3 minutes ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The president told a band of GOP hard-liners to lift their blockade of House floor business, but some are doubling down in new ways…
Read More

Politics

The World Cup’s final boss

Published

8 minutes ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

World Cup planners have long expected President Donald Trump will come to one or more matches. Now we know, thanks to FIFA head Gianni Infantino, that Trump will be at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to hand out the gold trophy after the final match concludes.

The July 19 event will be one more test of the region’s security and transportation apparatus, one that is in the middle of a long summer, including Trump’s early trip to New York earlier that month for a parade of warships.

From a logistical perspective, said Alex Lasry of the bistate New York/New Jersey host committee, the final is “its own animal,” with its own set of transportation and security worries.

At least one part of the animal will be familiar to local organizers: Trump’s presence. The president regularly returns to his native New York City and his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey. He was at MetLife last year to hand out the Club World Cup trophy alongside Infantino.

Politics

Dems are trying everything in battlegrounds. Republicans are sticking with Trump.

Published

1 hour ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans are betting their path to victory in 2026 runs through MAGA. Democrats are still figuring out how to win.

Two-thirds of the way through primary season, results from dozens of hotly contested battlegrounds across the country reveal a Republican Party that remains fully captured by President Donald Trump, even in swing districts that have at times rejected his brand, and a Democratic Party that is still consumed by factional infighting over how to win.

The implications are huge: If Republicans can win even competitive seats with MAGA candidates, that can further entrench the populist far right’s hold on the party. But if they suffer sweeping losses, that could bolster the more moderate GOP wing’s push for a return to power.

Democrats, meanwhile, will have plenty to study in November as they search for clues to winning back the White House in 2028. They’ve nominated an array of candidates, from far-left progressives to traditional centrists.

“The proof is going to be in the pudding,” said Larry Ceisler, a Democratic-aligned Pennsylvania-based public affairs executive. “Can these people win competitive general elections? And that’s going to be a lesson that’s going to go into ‘28.”

Republican voters have rallied behind candidates who closely align themselves with Trump and the MAGA brand, from Rep. Mike Collins and billionaire Rick Jackson in Georgia, to Bobby Charles and Marty O’Donnell in Nevada’s 3rd District. Trump-endorsed candidates have largely won their primaries this year, with a few high-profile exceptions in Iowa, Georgia and South Carolina, where Trump ended up endorsing both Republicans in the gubernatorial runoff at the last minute.

Democrats are being pulled by competing visions for their party’s future. For Texas Senate, Democrats chose buttoned-up James Talarico, but for Maine Senate they picked scandal-plagued Graham Platner. For New York’s 17th District on Tuesday, Democrats nominated no-nonsense and establishment-aligned veteran Cait Conley, but in California’s 22nd District, voters bucked party leadership and chose a firebrand progressive in Randy Villegas.

The results could turn Trump into a lame duck the last two years of his term, test the power of his brand a decade after he first ascended, and set in motion the direction of both parties ahead of the next presidential election.

Republicans bet on MAGA

The question of whether MAGA can win in battlegrounds has dogged the GOP in recent years, with loyalists like Kari Lake losing key races in 2022 and down-ballot Republicans trailing Trump in 2024.

They’re not changing tack.

Even as the president’s popularity sags, driven by dissatisfaction with the economy, his aggressive deportations and an unpopular war in Iran, the Republican base voters who drive the primaries are continuing to nominate MAGA candidates, not moderates.

That bucks conventional wisdom, which holds that a general election victory, especially in competitive races, requires assembling a broader coalition — one where Trump’s endorsement may not always help. A recent POLITICO Poll found that receiving Trump’s backing provoked a stronger negative reaction from voters who are opposed to the president than a positive one from those who support him, making it a net negative for a hypothetical candidate.

That is a dynamic Republican candidates will need to navigate in the months ahead — a particularly delicate balancing act for those who embraced the president’s agenda during the primary, but now must try to win over a more diverse segment of the electorate.

In Georgia, the Trump-backed Collins prevailed in last week’s GOP Senate runoff after leaning into his MAGA credentials. Now, he transitions to a match-up against incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, where appealing to a broader coalition of voters could prove equally as important as energizing the Republican base.

MAGA-aligned candidates also triumphed in Maine, with Charles gunning for the governor’s mansion and former Republican Gov. Paul LePage seeking to flip moderate Democrat Rep. Jared Golden’s now-open House seat. And in Nevada’s 2nd District, Trump-endorsed McDonnell, who just recently came under fire for hosting a Nazi on his podcast, is trying to pick off Democratic Rep. Susie Lee — one of the Republican Party’s top targets.

Even candidates who didn’t gain the president’s endorsement have ridden his brand to victory. Jackson won the GOP nomination for Georgia governor over a Trump-backed candidate, vowing to be “Trump’s favorite governor” and touting his support for the president’s agenda.

Still, Jason Roe, a Michigan-based GOP strategist, said MAGA is “baked into the Republican brand at this point,” so there’s “very little risk” for candidates to embrace Trump during a primary before pivoting to the general election.

The Democratic party throws everything at the wall

Democrats have one point of unity: They’re messaging against the party in power.

Most of their candidates push back against Trump and argue they would do a far better job addressing the nation’s cost of living, repeatedly the top issue for voters, than Republicans have.

But the party’s clashes over identity and charged issues like Israel and the war in Gaza have been on full display across some of the most-high profile matchups.

Voters “are looking for, ‘Hey, who is the right candidate that can actually win and represent me best in where I live?’” said Andres Ramirez, a Nevada-based Democratic consultant. “Where progressives can do well, they’re going to do well, where moderates can do well, they’re going to do well, and the full spectrum in between.”

Progressives have seen a slate of victories, including Villegas in California’s 22nd District and Matt Dunlap in Maine’s 2nd District. And Platner, despite being mired in controversy, crushed Maine Gov. Janet Mills even before the primary officially took place. All three defeated establishment choices backed by Democrats’ official campaign arms, a sign the party lacks the kind of total control that Trump enjoys over the GOP.

But moderates haven’t been far behind, with veterans like Conley winning in New York and Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey’s 7th District. In some of this year’s top battlegrounds, establishment-backed candidates have advanced, including Aaron Ford in Nevada and Josh Turek in Iowa.

Then there’s the faceoff next week in Colorado between Manny Rutinel, a progressive, and establishment-backed Shannon Bird and the brutal showdown later this summer in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, where progressive Abdul El-Sayed is leading two more moderate challengers, Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow.

The midterms will help give the party clues about what kind of Democrats are best poised to win ahead of 2028 — but it has also turbocharged an ideological civil war between the different wings of the party, especially as progressives have gained ground in both deep-blue and battleground districts.

Jesse Ferguson, a longtime Democratic strategist, said that in some of the nation’s swingiest districts, “the most electable candidates” are largely prevailing.

“There will be lots of debate about winning primaries in places like NYC and what that means for 2028, but the most important races — the ones in the swing districts — are being won by the candidates who give us the best chance to win the majority in 2026,” said Ferguson. “That’s what matters.”