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 backed – for now – by the US after it forcibly removed Nicolás Maduro from power.
Machado told Fox News from an undisclosed location that 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 of the country after Maduro’s detention on Saturday, but Trump sidelined her and gave his backing to Maduro’s former vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez.
“I’m planning to go back to Venezuela as soon as possible,” Machado said in the interview. “We believe that this transition should move forward. We 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” in Venezuela and said repression had increased since the weekend.
The industrial engineer, 58, also said she had not spoken to Trump since 10 October, the day it was announced that she had won the Nobel peace prize.
“But I do want to say today, on behalf of the Venezuelan people, how grateful we are for his courageous vision, the actions – historical actions – he has taken against this narco-terrorist regime, to start dismantling this structure and bringing Maduro to justice,” she said.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had decided to back Rodríguez after CIA analysts briefed him that Machado and her electoral candidate, the retired diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, “would struggle to gain legitimacy as leaders while facing resistance from pro-regime security services, drug-trafficking networks and political opponents”.
The Washington Post, however, reported the decision may have been more personal, that Trump may have been irritated that Machado accepted the prize. “If she had turned it down and said: ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” a source told the paper.
Asked by Fox News whether she had offered to give Trump the prize, Machado said: “It hasn’t happened yet, but I would certainly love to be able to personally tell him that we believe the Venezuelan people – because this is a prize of the Venezuelan people – certainly want to give it to him and share it with him.”
Trump has said he wants to work with Rodríguez and the rest of Maduro’s former team provided they submit to US demands on oil. He has poured cold water on the idea that a vote could be held within the next 30 days.
In a rambling address to Republican lawmakers on Tuesday, Trump made only a passing reference to the attack on Caracas and rendition of Maduro, who he described as “a violent guy”.
“He’s killed millions of people. He’s tortured,” he said.
On Monday, the Venezuelan government made public a decree dated Saturday and signed by Maduro – who was arrested at 2.01am – declaring a “state of external commotion”, effectively a state of emergency, and ordering the “immediate search and capture of anyone involved in the promotion or support of the US armed attack”.
Beyond the pursuit of those accused of supporting the US attack – a task made more complex by the widespread belief that senior government figures, including the acting president, may have provided crucial information leading to Maduro’s capture – the decree orders the mobilisation of the armed forces, mandates the militarisation of all public service infrastructure, the oil sector and basic state industries, and suspends the right to public assembly and protest.
At least 14 journalists and media workers, including 13 linked to international outlets, were detained in Caracas on Monday. Thirteen were later released, one of whom was deported.
Gunshots and explosions were reported near the Miraflores presidential palace overnight. The government said it had fired at unauthorised drones flying over the area.
