María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, repeatedly praised US president Donald Trump on Monday during a prime-time appearance on Fox News, her first televised interview since the United States captured Nicolás Maduro and Trump ruled her out as a successor.
Machado, who led a successful election campaign against Maduro in 2024, spent much of the 10-minute interview appealing to Trump, who has declined to throw his support behind the opposition. She even offered him the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in October, a prize Trump has coveted for years.
“Because this is the prize of the Venezuelan people, certainly we want to give it to him and share it with him,” Machado told Fox News host Sean Hannity. She said that she had not spoken to Trump since October, when she dedicated the prize to him.
Trump has chosen to conditionally back Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, as interim leader instead of Machado or Edmundo González, who ran after Machado was barred from being a candidate. Machado and González have said that he is the legitimate president of Venezuela.
“She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country,” Trump said of Machado on Saturday. “She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”
Senior US officials, including secretary of state Marco Rubio, had convinced Trump that Venezuela could be further destabilised if the United States tried to back the opposition. A classified CIA intelligence analysis reflected that view, according to a person familiar with the document.
On Monday, Machado said the opposition would turn Venezuela into a security ally of the United States and an energy hub for the Americas, provide protection for foreign investment and repatriate millions of Venezuelans who had fled the country under Maduro.
“We will leave behind all the destruction this socialist regime, criminal regime has brought to our people and turn Venezuela into the main ally of the United States in Latin America,” she said.
How Machado’s movement could be allowed to govern is unclear. Trump has not indicated if new elections will be held in Venezuela, saying only that the United States was “in charge” of the country. Machado said on Monday that the opposition would win “over 90 per cent of the vote in free and fair elections”.
María Corina Machado had been banned from leaving Venezuela but secretly travelled to Norway in December after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Photograph: Rune Hellestad/Getty Images
After the 2024 election, Machado went into hiding for more than a year. In December, she secretly left Venezuela to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. She missed the award ceremony but appeared in Oslo to greet supporters.
“I am planning to go back as soon as possible,” she said on Monday, without giving away her location. “Every day I make a decision where I am more useful for our cause.” – This article originally appeared in The New York Times.