This is the usual Trump propaganda and "diplomacy" tactic. Build up to some explosive action that shocks the world, announce a complete and total achievement of their war goals prematurely and capitulation from the opposition, then continue negotiating the details quietly with the very much not defeated opposition for more limited war goals.

It serves as a way to disarm domestic opposition, as people will believe "it's already over" and so that there's nothing to be done and magnify and normalize the actions abroad with their media monopoly. Then the opponent has to catch up to them with their smaller media presence in the world stage and language barrier.

This has been a trend this whole presidency, the conflicts with Sheinbaum and Petro early on, tariffs on Brazil among others. People often act as though Trump is crazy and unpredictable, but he's actually pretty repetitive in his methods.

Typical American arrogance led to a huge fuck up. This is pretty normal for us.

The US are either trying to stir the pot and get a civil war going, or they really cut a deal with Rodriguez and she's just playing her part in consolidating power then selling off.

I'd rather believe the former, than the latter, considering that Rodriguez's father was "disappeared" by a US puppet regime in Venezuela when she was younger.

Trump has exaggerated or outright lied about the outcome of virtually every military and diplomatic action taken by his administration, since he got inaugurated. He's desperate for both a personal and a national win. Similarly to the Iranian bombing, he's done a show of force and is using it to declare victory. He's likely going to withdraw the fleet from Venezuela's coast now, and will keep milking "all the beautiful things" he has planned for Venezuela, in the coming months. However, not much else is going to happen. Dissing Corina Machiado probably means he's not interested in supporting a puppet regime, or he realizes that doing so would be extremely expensive and likely to fail. If the US uses further military force, then the situation will very likely blow up in unexpected ways. Unfortunately, that means that there's not much hope for releasing Maduro (through diplomacy or war), and he will probably die in a US prison cell, unless China and Russia intervene.

We should be keeping a very close eye on how the Venezuelan government proceeds from now, as that will tell us whether Trump actually cut a deal or not.

Furthermore, we should also be keeping a close eye on what Russia and China will be doing about Venezuela. I find that their responses so far have been slow (to put it mildly) and disappointingly lukewarm. This is not uncharacteristic of them, but I still fear that they might have cut a deal with Trump, especially in exchange for Ukraine and Taiwan.

Although, the night before Maduro was kidnapped, he was meeting at the presidential palace with Chinese delegates, so I'm much less inclined to believe that China cut a deal with Trump, compared to Russia.