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Venezuelan leader of the opposition Maria Corina Machado Spent months trying to get Donald Trump’s Favor – but the President of the United States appears ready to put her in trouble.
Machado, who led a successful campaign to defeat deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in 2024 despite being barred from holding public office, is often touted as the leader with the most popular legitimacy to lead the South American country.
But Trump, who was defeated by Machado to win the Nobel Peace Prize in December, publicly opposed the 58-year-old president from Caracas taking power in Venezuela. Machado has remained in Norway since winning the award in October but has said she hopes to return after Maduro is ousted.
“I think it will be very difficult for her to become a leader,” Trump said on Saturday, hours after Maduro was captured by US forces in an overnight raid. “She had no support at home and she didn’t get respect. She was a very good woman but she didn’t get respect.”
Two White House sources said washington post After Machado decided to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, the president lost interest in supporting her. One person said Machado dedicated the award to Trump after winning it, but she committed the “ultimate sin” by accepting it in the first place.
“Had she refused and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she would be president of Venezuela today,” they added.
However, Machado said she would share the award with Trump, although she stopped short of offering to award him the award directly.
“This hasn’t happened yet,” she told fox news”, “But I would certainly love to be able to tell him personally that we believe that the Venezuelan people, because this is the prize for the Venezuelan people, certainly want to give it to him and share it with him. “
A person close to Machado’s team told the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s comments surprised Machado’s team. postal. One opposition figure told the outlet the comments were difficult to hear but “in every transition you have to swallow some bitter pill.”
But reports say that even before Maduro was ousted, the relationship between Machado and the White House was not smooth.
according to New York Times, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has opposed supporting Venezuela’s opposition, arguing that it would further destabilize the country and mean the country would need a larger military presence. A person familiar with the matter told the media that this view was supported by classified CIA intelligence.
this wall street journal It was also revealed that a CIA intelligence assessment determined that Maduro’s key allies, including Delcy Rodriguez, who was sworn in as president on Monday, were best suited to lead the interim government in Caracas and maintain short-term stability.
This analysis reportedly influenced Trump’s decision to support Rodriguez over Machado, who was not believed to have the support of the country’s armed forces and other elites.
Machado and her replacement candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who won more than two-thirds of the vote in the 2024 elections, will struggle to gain legitimacy and face strong resistance from pro-regime security services, drug cartels and political opponents, the report said.
Senior U.S. officials are said to have grown increasingly frustrated with Machado over the past year, finding her recent claims that Maduro’s regime was weakened and close to collapse to be inaccurate and increasingly doubtful of her ability to topple the government.
Relations between the White House and Machado reportedly began to deteriorate significantly almost immediately after Trump took office for the second time last January.
Before visiting Caracas, Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell requested a face-to-face meeting with Machado. The opposition leader reportedly refused to meet Grenell and instead arranged a phone call, setting a precedent for relations to sour over the next year.
Gurnell was allegedly frustrated with Machado’s lack of a concrete plan on how to bring Gonzalez into the job. Machado, in turn, is said to be upset by Grenell’s failure to strongly condemn Maduro’s regime as illegitimate.
Trump and Rubio are now focused on working with interim President Delcy Rodriguez, a Maduro ally and former vice president who was sworn in as president on Monday.
Opposition leaders say the coming days will determine whether Rodriguez will continue Maduro-style governance or make a “soft transition” to a Venezuelan government more friendly to the United States by replacing hardliners.