The President's Daily Brief
PDB Afternoon Bulletin | January 6th, 2026: Why Trump Refused to Back Venezuela’s Opposition & Iran’s Assassination Plot Against Damascus
06 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
It's Tuesday, the 6th of January. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed.
Chapter 2: Why did the Trump administration refuse to support Venezuela's opposition leader?
First up, one of the biggest unanswered questions after Maduro's ouster, why the Trump administration is apparently refusing to back or support Venezuela's opposition leader. New reporting reveals what's driving that decision.
Later in the show, Israeli defense sources warn that Iran may be plotting to assassinate Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharra as quiet contacts open between Israel and Damascus. But first, our afternoon spotlight.
One of the big questions, frankly the biggest question, that obviously remains after Nicolas Maduro's ouster is what comes next, and more particularly, why the Trump administration has chosen not to embrace opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Marina Corina de Machado as the next leader of Venezuela.
Well, a new New York Times report is now shedding some light on why that decision was apparently made. You may recall President Trump publicly dismissed Machado in recent days, saying that she lacked sufficient support and respect inside Venezuela, and made clear that she would not be backed by Washington as a successor, even as she praised U.S. action and signaled plans to return home.
Behind the scenes, according to The Times, that call was not impulsive. In fact, the administration had already made the decision before Maduro was removed.
The reporting says the White House was persuaded by a combination of intelligence assessments and internal frustration with Machado's political strategy, assessments that raised serious doubts about the opposition's ability to actually govern. U.S.
intelligence officials reportedly concluded that while Machado had popular legitimacy, her coalition lacked control of the institutions that matter, the security services, the bureaucracy, the military, and levers of state power. Without those, analysts warned that any attempt to install the opposition would likely collapse quickly, unless the U.S.
was prepared to maintain a sustained military presence in Venezuela. That concern was echoed by senior officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who warned that backing the opposition could further destabilize the country and drag Washington deeper into an open-ended commitment on the ground, as opposed to removing Maduro and allowing his cronies to take over.
In other words, from the administration's perspective, this wasn't about who had won the moral argument, it was about who could realistically hold the country together once the dust settled. The Times also reports that Machado's relationship with the Trump administration had been deteriorating for months. Senior U.S.
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Chapter 3: What factors influenced the U.S. decision regarding Marina Corina de Machado?
Because, well, they just seem too difficult. Capturing Maduro, the face of the regime, because his regime has been complicit in narco-trafficking, violent repression, and the outright theft of an election, but leaving his cronies in place to continue running things with the hope that they're now frightened enough to reform?
Well, yes, perhaps that's easier than forcing the regime's remaining key players to accept a transfer of power to the lawfully elected opposition. But really, at the end of the day, is it anything more than a reshuffling of bad actors? There's already reporting that the new Rodriguez regime is jailing journalists and hunting down anyone they feel supported the capture of Maduro.
Coming up next, just as Israel and Syria explore new contacts and channels of communication, Israeli sources warn that Iran may be moving to sabotage them with an assassination plot against Syria's new president. I'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, I have been known in my time to enjoy an ice cold gin martini or two.
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Chapter 4: How did U.S. intelligence assessments affect support for Venezuela's opposition?
According to reporting by the Israeli outlet Wallah, several high-level discussions in recent months led by Defense Minister Israel Katz culminated in a firm position. Israel should not withdraw from Syrian territory it currently controls, including the Mount Hermon region. A senior IDF security source confirms that the army's top leadership has endorsed that stance.
From there, Israeli officials outline how operations inside Syria are structured, and it's worth walking through that framework because it shows just how seriously the threat is being treated.
Government policy divides Israeli activity into three distinct zones, each designed to counter the kind of covert and explicit actions that officials in Jerusalem routinely attribute to Iran and its web of proxies.
The first is the immediate contact zone along the international border, where IDF forces operate closest to Israeli communities, with the explicit aim of preventing cross-border attacks and responding rapidly to emerging threats. The second is a security belt extending roughly 10 miles into Syrian territory.
This area includes villages and major transportation routes, and Israeli forces focus on preventing the infiltration or entrenchment of terror groups and infrastructure footholds that Iranian-backed actors have repeatedly sought to establish. The third zone is what officials describe as Israel's, quote, area of influence.
Stretching from Shweta to the outskirts of Damascus, it's treated as effectively demilitarized. Israeli intelligence closely monitors activity there to prevent the establishment of new military outposts and any proxy developments that would almost certainly point back to Iran.
As a result, Israeli defense officials say the suspected Iranian-backed assassination plot against Shira reinforces a broader assessment they've been making for years, that Iran remains the central destabilizing force in Syria and, of course, the surrounding region. And that, my friends, is the PDB Afternoon Bulletin for Tuesday, the 6th of January.
If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at pdbatthefirsttv.com. And to listen to the show ad-free, well, you can do that, and it's very, very simple. Just become a premium member of the President's Daily Brief by visiting pdbpremium.com. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool.
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