Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado endorsed President Trump’s recent seizure of a vessel transporting oil out of her home country and pressure campaign against the Maduro regime.
Machado acknowledged that tightening the screws on Venezuela could be brutal for the country’s already impoverished people, but praised Trump’s efforts to oust socialist leader Nicolás Maduro.
“I absolutely support President Trump’s strategy, and we, the Venezuelan people, are very grateful to him and to his administration, because I believe he is a champion of freedom in this hemisphere,” Machado told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.
“We have been asking this for years, so it’s finally happening,” she added. “That’s why I believe the regime has its days numbered.”
Machado left Venezuela last week during a perilous trip across rough waters as part of her journey to Norway to accept her Nobel Peace Prize and see her daughter for the first time since 2023.
She arrived hours after the formal ceremony and her daughter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in her stead. Machado had been in hiding and not seen in public since Jan. 9.
The Trump administration has stepped up its pressure campaign against Venezuela over recent weeks, taking out multiple alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea, dispatching additional military resources to the region, upping the bounty on Maduro to $50 million, and more.
Trump has also teased that he may strike land targets in Venezuela.
“I don’t know,” Machado said when asked about Trump’s plans for land strikes. “If I knew, I wouldn’t say it, of course. But it’s not the case. We are not involved, and we will not get involved into another nation’s policy for their own national security.”
Machado had won a primary contest to be the opposition candidate against Maduro in the 2024 elections. However, she was barred from running, so the nod ultimately got passed off to Edmundo Gonzalez.
Maduro was crowned the winner in the controversial election, the legitimacy of which the Biden administration and other outside observers have questioned.
After winning the Nobel Peace Prize in October, Machado announced she was dedicating it to Trump.
Trump spent months crowing about the conflicts around the world that he’s helped mediate, and the White House bristled when he wasn’t given the coveted prize.
Machado argued that while tougher sanctions and similar efforts to seize oil tankers in the future could harm Venezuelans, those punitive measures serve their long-term interests.
“What we’re doing is for the well-being of the Venezuelan people,” she said. “What we want to do is to save lives, but Maduro was the one who declared a war on the Venezuelan people. A war we didn’t want.”
“A war we are suffering with hundreds of thousands of killings and forced executions,” she added. “The cash the regime gets from these illegal activities goes to buy arms, to pay gang members to spy and infiltrate, and even further to increase their illegal narcotics activities and so on.”
