This is all necessarily speculative, we might never have sufficient visibility to know all the facts.

I'm merely attempting to provide the strongest reply the administration could provide if they cared to try. I believe it's reasonably grounded in facts.

1. US government openly does not recognize Maduro as the legitimate head of state of Venezuela

2. US government does recognize Edmundo González Urrutia as the president-elect.

3. Venezuelan opposition has been heavily lobbying in an effort to get foreign governments to intervene in Venezuela

All of these things are verifiable facts, I think they can be distilled into my perfectly reasonable suggestion as to how the US could fend off such criticism.

Decided by whom?

The reality is that there a lot of people across the political divide at very high levels of government who deeply dislike Maduro for a variety of reasons, some perhaps more pure-hearted than others.

Oil and drugs are obviously not even how they're justifying this to themselves. The oil in Venezuela isn't that interesting because it's really only US and some Canadian oil companies that are capable of extracting it. The US is always going to control oil production in Venezuela, no matter what.

But yeah, instead of focusing on all the silly statements the admin puts out you might as well just guess at the eventual steelmanned argument they'll present in writing at a later date.

> Also, shouldn't he then be doing this in many other places in the world?

No, I don't see how that would follow. I can choose to give money to a charity, but that does not mean I have to choose to give my money to all the charities in the world.