María Corina Machado vows to return to Venezuela, rejects US-backed interim president

The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has vowed to return to the country as soon as possible and rejected the authority of the interim president who has US backing after Nicolás Maduro was forcibly removed from power, she told Fox News from an undisclosed location.

Machado said her movement was ready to win a free election and praised Donald Trump for toppling Maduro. Many in Venezuela and abroad had expected Machado to take charge after Maduro’s detention, but Trump instead backed Maduro’s former vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez. Machado said: “I’m planning to go back to Venezuela as soon as possible” and added that her coalition had “won an election [in 2024] by a landslide under fraudulent conditions.

In free and fair elections, we will win over 90% of the votes.” She accused Rodríguez of being “one of the main architects of torture, persecution, corruption, narco-trafficking” and said repression had increased since the weekend. Machado said she had not spoken to Trump since 10 October, the day it was announced she had won the Nobel peace prize, and expressed gratitude “on behalf of the Venezuelan people” for his actions against the regime.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump decided to back Rodríguez after CIA analysts briefed him that Machado and her electoral candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, “would struggle to gain legitimacy” while facing resistance from security services and criminal networks.

Key Topics

World, María Corina Machado, Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump