Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has taken on a "terrible enemy" in President Donald Trump, who will not give up until a transfer of power occurs, Sen. Marco Rubio said Thursday.
"I've been on the president's good side, bad side, a little bit of both," Rubio, who campaigned against Trump in the 2016 presidential race, said during an appearance on Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
"When the president is on something, he's like a dog on a bone. He will not let go and give up on this until Maduro is out of there."
Trump deserves credit for his tough stance against Maduro, said Rubio, as "Maduro is Mafia and everyone around him is an organized crime ring."
"They traffic cocaine into the United States," he said. "(They are) stealing gold out of the ground and from the nation's reserves, making money off of that. Every crime you can imagine they're engaged in."
The pressure on Maduro is having an effect, Rubio added, because "every single prominent official" with access to him has reached out looking for a deal.
Meanwhile, Venezuela is about to hit an "epic humanitarian crisis," as the country has only a few days of gasoline and food left, said Rubio.
"When people ask me why should we care, 10 percent of Venezuela's population has abandoned the country in the last five years," said Rubio. "Another 2 million people will leave this year. It threatens to collapse Colombia and potentially Peru and Ecuador as well."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.