In sympathy.

Venezuela Has Already Been Negotiated

A public power snub, staged like a reality series scripted, transactional, and unmistakably final.

Dear Madam Machado,

This is not a lecture.
It’s a sketch because what just unfolded feels less like diplomacy and more like a cartoon, except the ink doesn’t wash off and the characters are world leaders.

You stepped onto the stage believing the script was negotiation.
It turned out to be farce.

Somewhere between Washington hallways and quiet assurances, you were led to believe that proximity meant leverage. That a President or his preferred dealer still spoke a language anchored in memory, consistency, or good faith. That if you carried the Nobel like a passport, the doors would open and history would pause.

Instead, the doors opened just long enough for the cameras.

Marco Rubio whose rhetorical shape-shifting is a matter of record has said harsher things about Donald Trump than many of his loudest critics. On the record. Repeatedly. Yet today, he stands as the indispensable broker: hemispheric middleman, keeper of ledgers, translator of interests from Caracas outward through energy corridors, maritime lanes, and places that know what it means to be noticed without being consulted.

Integrity, as usual, was not a prerequisite.

You stepped onto the stage believing the script was negotiation but it turned out to be farce. At one moment in the broader U.S. effort toward Venezuela, Marco Rubio had at times articulated firm criticisms of the Venezuelan regime and emphasized regional security concerns; more recently, in public briefings on policy toward Venezuela, he offered nuanced language about leveraging oil sanctions and maintaining stability rather than direct governance, even as President Donald Trump made broader assertions about U.S. control. Rubio has framed the administration’s approach in terms of pressuring change through existing measures including an oil quarantine — and managing security threats in the hemisphere, underscoring that what the U.S. “runs” is policy leverage rather than day-to-day governance.

And you believed the language of friendship.

That is where the cartoon sharpens.

You arrived bearing the Nobel not as a trophy, but as gesture. A signal. A peace offering in the old ceremonial sense. What met you was not reverence, nor even gratitude, but absorption. The symbol was taken in, neutralized, and redeployed on someone else’s terms.

Because here is the punchline no one needed explained aloud:
Venezuela had already been decided.

Nicolás Maduro was removed, yes but not to make room for you. Power does not travel in straight lines, and it rarely rewards moral consistency. Instead, the machinery pivoted seamlessly to Delcy Rodríguez the deal-maker, the continuity clause, the cooperative face acceptable to external interests. The transaction moved forward. You were not part of the closing.

That is the whiplash.