In mid-June, about a week or two before the double earthquakes hit Venezuela, there seemed to be this United States media campaign aimed at whitewashing and legitimizing the country's "interim president" Delcy Rodríguez.
It came from the left and some who call themselves conservative MAGA folks, and this Time magazine interview with her that came out this week looks like more of that.
The interview, which was conducted on June 16 at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, claims Delcy is leading a "transformational moment" and works in "good faith" with Donald Trump and Marco Rubio on recovering the country's economy, creating amnesty for political prisoners and opposition figures, and figuring out a timeline for eventual elections "when Venezuela is ready."
It attempts to legitimize this woman as a real head of state doing great things, and it's total garbage. She's none of those things.
Related: Something Else Is Amiss: Don’t Believe Everything You Read About Venezuela Right Now
The biggest omission was probably about Delcy's father and her family history. The original version of the article called Delcy's father a "student leader" who was "arrested, tortured, and killed" by the Venezuelan government in 1976. Sounds terrible doesn't it?
Here's what it doesn't tell you. Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, Delcy's father, was a Marxist guerrilla and co-founder of the militant leftist group the Socialist League. In February of 1976, he was a key player in the kidnapping of William Frank Niehous, a U.S. executive from the Owens-Illinois Inc. company. Yes, he died in custody, but the man was a left-wing terrorist, so don't go feeling too bad for him. Delcy was just a little girl at the time, but she has said that this is what prompted her own political career, that everything she has done in her life has been to seek revenge against enemy that killed her father (and she largely blames the United States).
Of course, a bunch of prominent Venezuelans unleashed on the magazine and the article's author. X users added Community Notes. And now, it appears as if the article has been rewritten slightly to reflect that reality
Hi @EricCortellessa @TIME , could you explain why you deliberately chose to omit from your article that Delcy Rodríguez's father was a guerrilla who kidnapped American citizens?
— Emmanuel Rincón (@EmmaRincon) July 30, 2026
William Niehous, the local president of Owens-Illinois, was kidnapped and held captive for more than… https://t.co/xHmp73A1nU pic.twitter.com/tcZXYyulfw
On the topic of elections, Miss Delcy herself said, "Venezuela will hold elections when it is ready to do so" and added that the problem is that extremists believe violent is the path to power, but power can only come from the ballot box. That's rich coming a woman who was the vice president of a regime that literally killed, detained, and disappeared its political opposition over the years.
On whether or not María Corina Machado specifically would be allowed to return to the country, the reporter let her gloss over and give a non-answer: "Look, I believe that Venezuela belongs to all Venezuelan men and women, and there will come a time, and I dream of that time, when Venezuela will not have a single sanction in place, a time when we can all come together. Extremism has cost the country dearly."
It's classic commie regime talk. There's always a "new era" approaching, but it usually lacks specifics. Of course, we know now that on Saturday, August 1, Rubio has set up talks between the current regime and 2015 National Assembly opposition members to start on a path toward elections. Delcy hadn't gotten her orders from the U.S. back when Time conducted the interview, though to be fair, I think the devastation of the earthquake and what it revealed about the regime and the unhappiness of the Venezuelan people sped that timeline up quite a bit.
Delcy also claims that she hasn't given up "Venezuelan sovereignty," and she is only working with the United States to bring peace and economic recovery to her country. The fact is, we know that's not true. We know she talks almost daily to the Trump administration and that Rubio is in charge of this entire project. Even Time admits that. But somehow, it still manages to present her as this moderate steward of a new partnership between our countries when at best, she's a puppet with threats of more military action hanging over her head.
I'm not sure why Time chose to make this situation look like something it's not. Well, actually, I think I am. Fully painting her as a hard-core Chavista with a terrorist-linked family history and an intact repressive apparatus would force the outlet to admit that Trump and Rubio are actually doing something right by using their leverage to control an anti-U.S. dictatorship.
And that's exactly what it is. Don't let anyone fool you, including Delcy herself. She spent 50 years hating the United States for the death of her father and becoming part of a revolution against it. She didn't suddenly become Miss Democracy USA seven months ago because a lightbulb went off. She knows the Trump administration will not hesitate to give her the Nicolás Maduro treatment if she ignores those demands.
To quote of one my favorite Venezuelan writers and journalists Emmanuel Rincón:
No human power or money exists capable of whitewashing Delcy Rodríguez's image before the international community.
Not while there are 30 million Venezuelans willing to defend their country, their history, and to judge the criminals who destroyed our nation.
