Venezuela's interim president Delcy Rodríguez appeared in late January to play a double game of talking tough at an overbearing United States while collaborating in private, amid U.S. pressures on her government to serve U.S. commercial and diplomatic interests. The Trump administration briefly bombed the country and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro in early January, and was insisting Rodríguez was being collaborative as interim leader. Yet several times she has insisted it was her government, not the United States, that was running Venezuela. On 25 January, she told a gathering in Caracas that politics "with a capital P" should resolve differences between Venezuelans, so "that's enough orders from Washington." Days before, she called for a national dialogue but "without foreign orders," according to the broadcaster NTN24. Observers told CNN on 27 January that such talk was directed at a domestic audience, as Rodríguez was "walking a tight rope" between Washington and regime hardliners. The immediate reaction from U.S. President Donald J. Trump was that he hadn't heard the comments. The Reuters news agency cited U.S. intelligence reports as voicing doubts on 27 January over the Rodríguez presidency's readiness to align itself with U.S. interests, notably in opposing powers like China, Islamic Iran and Russia.
