Ben Rhodes

So on Thursday, this week, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Machado is going to meet with President Trump in Washington.

The big question in the U.S.

media is whether she is going to give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize, despite the fact that the nice little Norwegians over at the Institute say you can't just do that.

You can't just kind of like hand the thing off.

I'm glad we're focused on the importance of your bend.

More consequentially, Machado is going to have to figure out how to balance pushing Trump to listen to the will of the people of Venezuela, or at least to hold elections with his decision to install Nicolas Maduro's handpicked vice president, Delce Rodriguez, as president and basically leave the entire Maduro regime in place.

Over the last week, the Venezuelan government has slowly started to begin to release political prisoners.

CNN reported that as of Tuesday afternoon, 56 prisoners out of the over 800 political prisoners in Venezuela have now been set free.

That is obviously a good thing.

But again, I asked the question, if Marco Rubio is the viceroy of Venezuela, why aren't more out?

Seems like you should be able to get this done quickly.

The Washington Post notes that it could be a sign of a power struggle between Delcy Rodriguez and her brother,

and the powerful interior minister who actually runs these prisons.

Time will tell.

There was also some great reporting then about the operation to get Maduro

One thing that really jumped out at me was the Times noted that the pilot, the Delta Force, like, pilot of the first helicopter of guys that approached Maduro's compound got shot in the leg three times and had to, quote, struggle to stay aloft and deliver its troops to the target, the helicopter did.

But this guy managed to drop off these Delta Force troops and then return to safety, which is, again, a reminder of how, like, unbelievable these dudes are who are fighting, right?

They're courageous and professional and can, like,

gut out something that is unimaginably painful, but also how close this operation was to a complete disaster.

If that helicopter goes down and those guys all die, this is a very different conversation right now.