Venezuelan leader says she's not under Washington's thumb..

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 before capturing its president, Nicolás Maduro, in early January, and was now insisting Rodríguez was being collaborative as interim leader. Yet she has declared several times that it was her government, not the United States, that was running Venezuela. On 25 January, she told a gathering in Caracas that only domestic politics "with a capital P" could 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 separately told CNN on 27 January that such talk was aimed 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 her comments. The Reuters news agency reported that day on the skepticism of U.S. intelligence over the Rodríguez presidency's readiness to align itself with U.S. interests, notably in opposing powers like China, Islamic Iran and Russia.