From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowa.

This is the Daily.

For months, President Trump has been ratcheting up the pressure on Venezuela, with increasingly aggressive military actions that the administration

claims are about targeting drug traffickers. But behind the scenes, some U.S. officials are pushing

toward a very different goal, regime change. Today, my colleague Anatoly Kerminaev explains the battle being waged within the White House

over whether to topple the government of Nicholas Maduro.

It's Thursday, October 23rd.

Anatole, welcome back to the Americas. You're in your old stomping ground in Caracas.

That's right. It's strange to be back, yeah, after eight years of reporting from here.

Just tell me how many times over the course of your career as a foreign correspondent,

you've been in Venezuela awaiting the theoretical end of this longstanding regime, now led by Maduro.

Oh, God. I arrived in the country just a few weeks after Maduro took power in 2013,

and I think I've seen at least six times, six moments when it looked like his government

might collapse. And, you know, I've seen it all. It was mass protests, you know, millions of

people on the streets. It was, you know, military coups. It was economic chaos, you know, the deepest

reception in the world outside of war zone and in modern history.

There was a national blackout for a week, then they just looked like the entire country might

collapse. There was a stolen election last year, and it's still the same government and power.

But what we haven't had before is the spectra of military action and military action from the most powerful country on Earth.

So a lot of people here believe that this time it could be different.

Okay. Let's get into this moment that we're in right now.

There have been so many boats that have been bombed in the Caribbean Sea at this point by the Trump administration

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