This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Mary Anastacio Grady of the Wall Street Journal editorial page

about the Trump administration after a little over a month in Venezuela.

The decision to withdraw the permission to use Chevron and oil drilling is pleases Mary.

However, this followed several puzzling exchanges between Washington and Caracas that suggested

that the Trump administration was undecided how to deal with an illegitimate president.

And what is to be done about the opposition, the leader of the opposition in hiding in Venezuela,

others suppressed or jailed or brutalized.

Here's Mary on early days, Washington and Caracas.

More of this tonight.

Well, I was very disappointed to see them give this photo opportunity to Maduro.

They did it to get six hostages back from Venezuela.

But, you know, this game of taking hostages and then, you know, doing some kind of a negotiation,

obviously favors Venezuela.

Now, yesterday, Donald Trump announced

that he is going to withdraw the licenses

that allow US companies to take oil out of the country.

So that's a good development.

I'm very happy about that because that will help the opposition.

But in general, he hasn't been much support

for the opposition in his first month in office.