Ben Rhodes

It's a brutal regime.

But we know that if we just try to install a new leader, they're going to fight that outcome.

And then that could get us deeper into a quagmire in Venezuela.

Well, what you would normally then do is try to set some roadmap to an election so that you have an event that at least creates the basis to have a new leader.

Or you would have some negotiated transition.

And yes,

And Machado has been very stubborn about, and I understand why.

It's a principled position to say, I'm not talking to these guys.

They throw my friends in prison.

But look, the United States has all the leverage right now.

And if you said, we all need to get together and have some kind of pacted transition, some kind of negotiation where there's essentially a power sharing.

between aspects of the existing regime, bring in the opposition, and then some roadmap to an election.

That's what you do.

But my take of what I've seen in the last couple of days is they have no competence, no patience, and no interest in doing that.

They just don't give a shit about the Venezuelan people.

Like nothing that they say.

They could have done more victory laps about the human rights possibilities of this.

They just don't care.

Like Trump clearly

could care less.