{"id":521236,"date":"2026-01-16T21:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T21:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/521236\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T21:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T21:17:13","slug":"cia-chief-visits-maduro-successor-as-machado-vows-to-become-venezuelas-president-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/521236\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA chief visits Maduro successor as Machado vows to become Venezuela\u2019s president | Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

The CIA chief whose agents reputedly played a key role in abducting Nicol\u00e1s Maduro has flown to Venezuela to meet his successor as the sidelined opposition leader, Mar\u00eda Corina Machado<\/a>, vowed she would become the country\u2019s first elected female president.<\/p>\n

Machado\u2019s comments were broadcast on Friday, a day after she handed her Nobel peace prize medal to Donald Trump<\/a> in recognition of what she called a principled and decisive move against Maduro, whom US special forces snatched on 3 January.<\/p>\n

The conservative politician predicted freedom was coming to her South American homeland after years of economic mayhem and authoritarianism under Maduro. \u201cAnd I believe I will be elected, when the right time comes, as president of Venezuela \u2013 the first woman president of Venezuela,\u201d she told<\/a> Fox News.<\/p>\n

Despite Machado\u2019s bullishness, experts say Trump has marginalised her opposition movement since his pre-dawn assault on Caracas momentarily ignited hopes of imminent democratic change.<\/p>\n

Rather than seeking to install Machado, whose opposition movement is widely believed to have beaten Maduro<\/a> in the 2024 presidential election, Trump gave his blessing to Maduro\u2019s vice-president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez<\/a>, calling her a \u201cterrific person\u201d. Rodr\u00edguez is governing as acting president with support from other key Maduro allies, including the feared interior minister, Diosdado Cabello<\/a>, and has vowed to improve ties with the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure the opposition is biting their tongue because this is just brutal for them,\u201d said Eva Golinger, a US lawyer who advised Maduro\u2019s predecessor, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez. \u201cThey\u2019re sidelined<\/a> \u2026 They have no role in what\u2019s going on. They\u2019re out of the game for now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s decision to back Rodr\u00edguez was reportedly based partly on personal animosity towards Machado and partly on CIA advice that she would be incapable of preventing a dangerous security breakdown by bringing the military and armed pro-regime paramilitary groups under control.<\/p>\n

Trump officials have been open about their decision to strike a deal with Maduro\u2019s closest allies, many of whom have been implicated in serious human rights violations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to work with the people that have the guns today to ultimately move the country to a representative government and a better station. But what you\u2019ve got to prevent in the meantime is a collapse of the nation,\u201d the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, told CBS News on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Golinger believed Machado hoped to squeeze her way back into Trump\u2019s plans by offering her 18-carat medal in a golden picture frame to a man obsessed with \u201ceverything gilded and golden\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mar\u00eda Corina Machado presents Donald Trump with her Nobel peace prize medal Photograph: White House\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

But she doubted the move would work, noting how Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s administration was already complying with one of Trump\u2019s key demands \u2013 opening up Venezuela\u2019s vast oil reserves to US companies. The first US deportation flight since Maduro\u2019s capture landed in Caracas on Friday carrying 199 Venezuelans.<\/p>\n

\u201cDelcy is giving him everything he wants. He has no reason to disrupt the situation \u2013 and he\u2019s certainly not going to let Mar\u00eda Corina Machado come in and try to shake things up,\u201d Golinger said.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>I\u2019m sure he sees her as weak. She\u2019s come [to Washington] and grovelled and handed over her Nobel peace prize \u2026 and she went out the back door \u2026 I would put money on the fact that should Delcy come to the White House, she will get a formal reception.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imdat Oner, a former Turkish diplomat in Venezuela who is a fellow at Florida International University\u2019s Jack D Gordon institute for public policy, also doubted Machado\u2019s gift would change Trump\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey bet fully on the Trump administration<\/a> \u2026 [that] Trump would remove the whole regime from power and open a path for the opposition. But this didn\u2019t happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMachado\u2019s hands are tied \u2026 she definitely understands that she has already been sidelined and she will not be part of the game,\u201d he said, calling the idea of her becoming president \u201ccompletely out of the question\u201d for now.<\/p>\n

If Machado\u2019s visit to the White House was widely viewed as a humiliation for the Nobel laureate, the arrival of the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, in Caracas on Thursday was also seen as a mortifying moment for Rodr\u00edguez and members of her \u201cinterim administration\u201d.<\/p>\n

Less than two weeks earlier, Ratcliffe\u2019s agents had played a key role in infiltrating Maduro\u2019s inner-circle to pinpoint his location so he could be seized from what should have been Venezuela\u2019s most fortified address. Their information was reportedly so strong that they even knew what food Maduro was eating and which pets he had.<\/p>\n

One US official told the New York Times<\/a> Ratcliffe had gone to Caracas to \u201cto deliver the message that the United States looks forward to an improved working relationship\u201d with the embattled remnant\u2019s of Maduro\u2019s regime led by Rodr\u00edguez.<\/p>\n

Speaking during a state of the union address that Maduro had expected to be giving himself, Rodr\u00edguez said their country \u201chad the right\u201d to good relations with the US and that she was willing to travel to Washington to hold talks with representatives of the \u201clethal nuclear power\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pretext of any kind of anti-imperialist socialist movement [has] really just been stripped away. It\u2019s ridiculous,\u201d said Golinger.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t claim in the morning \u2026 that you\u2019re an anti-imperialist sovereign movement and then receive the director of the CIA \u2026 after 10 days earlier they bombed Caracas and executed an extraordinary rendition of the sitting head of state.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just farcical \u2026 what we\u2019re witnessing is a clear betrayal of everything that [the Chavismo] movement stood for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The CIA chief whose agents reputedly played a key role in abducting Nicol\u00e1s Maduro has flown to Venezuela…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":521237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[50,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-521236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115906862384081084","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}