On Friday, August 28, 2026, President Trump announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had cut a deal with Venezuela's acting president, Delcy Rodríguez. American companies get access to what Trump called "65 BILLION BARRELS" of proven Venezuelan oil, "at no cost to the American Taxpayer." The Venezuelan government said the arrangement covers 17 oil fields and would bring roughly $100 billion in investment and more than $209 billion in tax revenue into the country.
The next day, Maria Elvira Salazar — who represents Miami's 27th District, home to one of the largest Venezuelan communities in the United States — went on X and said what she thought of it.
"Any oil 'deal' with Venezuela's interim regime has an expiration date: the day President Trump leaves the White House.
Venezuela's acting dictator is just buying time. The regime has stolen American investments before, and it will do it again the moment it can.
A lasting deal can only be made with a democratically elected government that respects the rule of law, protects private property, and is backed by strong democratic institutions.
No democracy. No lasting deal. Period."
She posted it in English and in Spanish. Then she deleted both.
About an hour later, according to the New York Post, she was back with a new one.
"The U.S.-Venezuela oil deal is a great deal for the United States and the Venezuelan people."
She added that "for years, China took advantage of Venezuela's weakness to buy its oil at deep discounts. Now America is stepping in, and American investment and influence offer Venezuela a path toward prosperity, stability, and security." She wrote, "We want this deal to last 100 years" — and kept the condition from the post she had just deleted: "Only an administration backed by strong democratic institutions and the rule of law can guarantee that. This will only be possible with free elections."
Nothing about the deal changed in that hour. Delcy Rodríguez was still the person on the other side of the table — Salazar said so herself in the second post, allowing that "Delcy is the wrong person to make this deal with." The regime that she said had "stolen American investments before" was the same regime. What changed was the verdict: a deal she had just given an expiration date became one she wanted to last a hundred years.
Nine months ago she said oil money was the problem
This is not a case of a member being caught out on a subject she has no record on. Salazar has built a large part of her political identity on Venezuela.
On December 10, 2025, she praised a Trump administration move against the regime in terms that could not be plainer:
"Maduro's illegitimate narco-terror regime is kept afloat by two things: DRUGS and OIL MONEY. If we want democracy restored in Venezuela, we have to choke BOTH of the Regime's life lines. Well done @POTUS!"
Oil money. Choke it. Well done.
Eight and a half months later, the same administration signed a deal that Venezuela's own government projects will send it more than $209 billion in tax revenue, and her objection lasted about sixty minutes.
Salazar also posted on January 3, 2026, after U.S. Special Forces captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife, that "the narco-terror imposed by the Maduro regime is over" and that it was "time for the rightful leaders of Venezuela to restore freedom." Rodríguez, the person now running the country and signing oil contracts with Washington, was Maduro's own vice president. She is not one of the rightful leaders Salazar had in mind. Salazar has said publicly that opposition leader María Corina Machado "does not need Delcy Rodríguez's permission" to return to her own country.
Her deleted post said there could be no deal without democracy first. Her replacement post said the deal was great, and democracy was what would make it last.
Her district is not an abstraction here
Salazar's district is Miami. Venezuelan exiles who left because of that regime live there, work there, and vote there. In February 2025 the same administration she is now praising moved to strip Temporary Protected Status from more than 300,000 Venezuelans nationwide, and Salazar was one of the three Miami Republicans who put out a statement when the Supreme Court let it happen.
She has been down this road before. Her neighbor in the Miami delegation, Mario Diaz-Balart, wrote letters defending the Venezuelans in his district and then voted to give ICE $70 billion. And Salazar's own record already includes a habit of announcing a principle in public and then not carrying it: she has toured the country for a year promoting an immigration bill that has never gotten a hearing, and she handed a children's hospital a ceremonial check for money she had voted against.
The New York Post asked her for comment. She did not respond.
The bottom line
In December 2025, Maria Elvira Salazar said the Venezuelan regime was kept alive by "DRUGS and OIL MONEY" and that America had to choke both. On August 29, 2026, the day after Trump announced an oil deal that Venezuela's own government projects will send that regime more than $209 billion in tax revenue, she posted — in two languages — that Venezuela's "acting dictator is just buying time" and that there could be "no democracy, no lasting deal." She deleted both posts within the hour and replaced them with a statement calling the deal "great," keeping her condition about free elections and dropping her objection to the deal.
Source
Florida rep deletes X post blasting Trump's oil deal with Venezuela, then posts again to praise it — Adry Torres, New York Post, August 29, 2026. Image: the deleted post, captured six minutes after it was published (New York Post).
