Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado has praised US President Donald Trump’s action in Caracas.
According to The Irish Times, Machado 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.”
Further, Machado also 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.
