“Richard Grenell, a close Trump ally who has served numerous roles in the administration, quietly embarked on a pre-election mission last month that was at least partly intended to persuade President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to give up power,” the New York Times reports.

“The trip, which was reported by Bloomberg News on Wednesday night, caught the State Department and even some White House officials off guard and created confusion about its purpose.”

Jonathan Swan: “President Trump has suggested to national security officials that the U.S. should station Navy ships along the Venezuelan coastline to prevent goods from coming in and out of the country.”

“Trump has been raising the idea of a naval blockade periodically for at least a year and a half, and as recently as several weeks ago, these officials said. They added that to their knowledge the Pentagon hasn’t taken this extreme idea seriously, in part because senior officials believe it’s impractical, has no legal basis and would suck resources from a Navy that is already stretched to counter China and Iran.”

“The Trump administration is moving to impose a total economic embargo against the government of Venezuela, a significant escalation of pressure against the regime of President Nicolás Maduro and countries including Russia and China that continue to support him,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“President Trump late Monday signed an executive order freezing all government assets and prohibiting transactions with it, unless specifically exempted, the first action of its kind against a government in the Western Hemisphere in more than 30 years. The move places Venezuela on a par with North Korea, Iran, Syria and Cuba, the only other countries currently under such stringent U.S. measures.”

President Trump said he may order a blockade of Venezuela, where the U.S. has sought to depose President Nicolas Maduro, Bloomberg reports.

President Trump has lost interest in Venezuela after U.S. support for a coup failed to produce immediate results, the Washington Post reports.

Trump has lost “patience and interest” in the issue as attempts to remove President Maduro from power have stalled. Trump reportedly “chewed out the staff” in a meeting shortly after the failed takeover at the end of April, and hasn’t really mentioned it much since.

“Zimbabwe’s collapse under Robert Mugabe. The fall of the Soviet Union. Cuba’s disastrous unraveling in the 1990s. The crumbling of Venezuela’s economy has now outpaced them all,” the New York Times reports.

“Venezuela’s fall is the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 years, economists say.”

“President Trump is questioning his administration’s aggressive strategy in Venezuela following the failure of a U.S.-backed effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro, complaining he was misled about how easy it would be to replace the socialist strongman with a young opposition figure,” the Washington Post reports.

“The president’s dissatisfaction has crystallized around national security adviser John Bolton and what Trump has groused is an interventionist stance at odds with his view that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires.”

New York Times: “President Trump’s top advisers woke up Tuesday believing that a rebellion in the Venezuelan military that day would galvanize a popular uprising and topple a leader they have described as a reviled despot who must be replaced. But at day’s end, President Nicolás Maduro was still in power and Mr. Trump’s advisers were left to blame Cuba, Russia and three influential Venezuelan officials, who failed to switch sides, for frustrating their plans.”

“The decision of the Venezuelans to stand with Mr. Maduro — either because they were intimidated, got cold feet or never planned to defect — raised questions about whether the United States had faulty intelligence about the ability of the opposition to peel away members of his government.”

Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro claimed his troops have thwarted a botched attempt to topple him masterminded by Venezuela’s “coup-mongering far right” and Donald Trump’s deranged imperialist “gang,” the Guardian reports.

However, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that U.S. military action in the country was a possibility “if required.”

“President Trump’s top aides on Tuesday publicly backed an attempted coup in Venezuela, where opposition leaders have teamed with a band of rebellious soldiers in an effort to oust strongman leader Nicolás Maduro,” Politico reports.

“Supporting the uprising is a risky proposition for the Trump administration. Maduro, who retains the loyalty of many of his military generals, may survive and many Latin Americans resent America’s history of backing coups throughout the region. Russia and Cuba are also propping up Maduro.”

“The United States announced late Monday that it is pulling the remaining staff from its embassy in Venezuela, citing the deteriorating situation in the South American nation,” Politico reports.

“The U.S. has led an international effort to oust socialist President Nicolas Maduro and replace him with opposition leader Juan Guaido, who vows to hold a new presidential election. Guaido is backed by some 50 countries, while Maduro maintains support from countries such as China, Russia and Cuba.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) sounded the alarms in a tweet about an electrical blackout in Venezuela, but the response from a journalist is priceless:

MARCO RUBIO: The worst electricity & telecommunications blackout in #Venezuela history’s going on 48 hours. A blackout caused by #MaduroRegime negligence… Today another transformer explosion at the German Dam in Bolivar State caused another massive blackout.

GERMAN DAM: Senator @marcorubio, an important transformer exploded in Bolívar and that, in part, again collapsed the Venezuelan Electric System; however it was not in a dam, much less german. My name is Germán Dam, I am one of the journalists who published the information.

“The narrative seemed to fit Venezuela’s authoritarian rule: Security forces, on the order of President Nicolás Maduro, had torched a convoy of humanitarian aid as millions in his country were suffering from illness and hunger,” the New York Times reports.

“But there is a problem: The opposition itself, not Mr. Maduro’s men, appears to have set the cargo alight accidentally.”

“Unpublished footage obtained by The New York Times and previously released tapes — including footage released by the Colombian government, which has blamed Mr. Maduro for the fire — allowed for a reconstruction of the incident.”

President Nicolas Maduro told the AP that his foreign minister recently held secret talks in New York with the U.S. special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams, even as the Trump administration was publicly backing an effort to unseat the Venezuelan president.

The Trump administration announced sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company to try to force President Maduro to step down, the Washington Post reports.

Jonathan Swan: “The Trump administration is trying to use economic and diplomatic pressure to push for regime change in Venezuela. The White House is hoping that if they deprive Maduro of cash the Venezuelan military will have no reason to stay loyal to him.”

New York Times: “Administration officials indicated that Mr. Trump was still not ruling out military intervention in his efforts to pressure Mr. Maduro to step down.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Axios “that as recently as a couple of weeks ago Trump mused to him about the possibility of using military force in Venezuela, where the U.S. government is currently pushing for regime change using diplomatic and economic pressures.”

Graham, recalling his conversation with Trump a couple weeks ago, said: “He said, ‘What do you think about using military force?’ and I said, ‘Well, you need to go slow on that, that could be problematic.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m surprised, you want to invade everybody.'”

Graham laughed: “I don’t want to invade everybody, I only want to use the military when our national security interests are threatened.”

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela “faced the most direct challenge to his power Wednesday, when an opposition leader swore himself in as the nation’s legitimate president, cheered on by tens of thousands of supporters and a growing number of governments, including the Trump administration,” the New York Times reports.

“The fast-moving developments convulsing the impoverished country appeared to give momentum to the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, a 35-year-old politician who stepped onto the national stage just recently.”

“But Mr. Maduro dismissed the move, derisively calling it an American-led plot to overthrow him. He said he was cutting all remaining diplomatic relations with the United States.”

Washington Post: “The dramatic developments came as anti-Maduro protests drew hundreds of thousands of people into Venezuelan streets.”

“The Trump administration held secret meetings with rebellious military officers from Venezuela over the last year to discuss their plans to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro,” the New York Times reports.

“Establishing a clandestine channel with coup plotters in Venezuela was a big gamble for Washington, given its long history of covert intervention across Latin America. Many in the region still deeply resent the United States for backing previous rebellions, coups and plots in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil and Chile, and for turning a blind eye to the abuses military regimes committed during the Cold War.”