Just a week before the powerful double-earthquake, which has killed more than 3,800 people, the US spearheaded a long-awaited step toward power-sharing, with an opposition figure meeting in Caracas with the National Assembly chief who is the brother of interim President Delcy Rodriguez.That June 18 meeting now feels like long ago, and Trump has appeared peeved that the most visible opposition leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, had hoped to return to Venezuela in the disaster's aftermath.The Caracas talks were meant to herald the second stage of what US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called a three-part strategy -- stabilization followed by recovery and then transition. Venezuela, it appears, is now back on the stabilization phase.The US is "100 percent focused on this response to the devastating earthquakes in Venezuela and in advancing the Trump administration's three-phase plan for Venezuela, which remains intact," said John Barrett, the top US diplomat in Caracas.Trump ordered a deadly raid in Caracas on January 3 that snatched president Nicolas Maduro, a firebrand leftist and US nemesis. Rodriguez, who was Maduro's vice president, quickly took over with the support of Trump, who has threatened her with violence if she does not cooperate on his key priorities, starting with working with US oil companies."Trump is taking advantage of the situation so American companies can win contracts and gain access to resources" in the country with the world's largest oil reserves, a former Venezuelan senior official said.The US has sent in quake rescue teams boosting the humanitarian response as Venezuelans have jeered the efforts of Rodriguez's government.One US official blamed the poor Venezuelan response on Maduro, whose "regime pillaged the country for decades." Rodriguez and other interim authorities, the US official told AFP, "have been fully cooperative" with the US.David Smilde, an expert on Venezuela at Tulane University, said that Trump primarily cares about Venezuela's oil and other natural resources and forcing it to take back migrants."Trump doesn't really care about democracy," Smilde said, while adding that others in the administration such as Rubio had more nuanced takes."There is a real danger that the Trump administration just works perpetually with Delcy Rodriguez or whoever can provide stability."Machado plots returnThe US for years had imposed stringent sanctions on Venezuela and, along with many Latin American and European countries, championed the opposition, which many observers say won a fraudulent 2024 vote in which Maduro gained another term.