Edward Wong, Tyler Pager, Charlie Savage, Julian E. Barnes and Maria Abi-Habib
On a spring night in the Oval Office, President Trump asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio how to get tougher on Venezuela.
It was just before Memorial Day, and anti-leftist Cuban American lawmakers whose votes Mr. Trump needed for his signature domestic policy bill were urging him to tighten a vise on Venezuela by stopping Chevron’s oil operations there. But Mr. Trump did not want to lose the only U.S. foothold in Venezuela’s oil industry, where China is the biggest foreign player.
The president was considering allowing Chevron to continue. But he told Mr. Rubio, a longtime hawk on Venezuela and Cuba, that they had to show the lawmakers and other doubters they could bring the hammer down on Nicolás Maduro, the leftist autocratic leader of Venezuela, whom Mr. Trump had tried to oust in his first term.
Another aide in the room, Stephen Miller, said he had ideas. As Mr. Trump’s homeland security adviser, he had been talking with other officials about Mr. Trump’s campaign vow to bomb fentanyl labs. For various reasons, that notion had faded, and in recent weeks Mr. Miller had turned to exploring attacks on boats suspected of carrying drugs off the shores of Central America.
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