Some have questions about who will be Venezuela’s next leader after President Donald Trump said the country’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, does not have the respect of the people to govern after the capture of Nicolás Maduro by the United States.
The president firmly told the world what he wants for Venezuela, starting now.
During his news conference at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, Trump said the United States will lead the South American country during the transition, although he did not give a timeline or details on who will oversee Venezuela.
“We are in the oil business,” Trump said. “We are going to sell it to them. In other words, we will sell oil in greater quantities because they could not produce much because their infrastructure was very bad.”
The vice president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, assumes the role of interim president after being sworn in hours after Maduro’s capture.
“She is essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said. “Very simple.”
South Florida Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz believes it is wrong for the United States to work with Rodriguez.
“If you cut off the head of a snake, only to replace it with a different head, just as evil, that is unacceptable,” he said.
Wasserman Schultz instead pointed to opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado to be the country’s next leader.
When asked about Machado, Trump made his opinion clear.
“I think it would be very difficult for her to be the leader,” she said. “He does not have internal support or respect within the country.”
Sunday on “This Week in South Florida” with Glenna Milberg, South Florida Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who went to Oslo with Machado when she won the Nobel Prize, predicted her friend’s time will come.
Salazar said that first, the United States must stabilize Venezuela.
“Most of the opposition leaders, including the ones you mentioned, María Corina Machado, who I believe will be the next president of Venezuela in the future once elections are organized, not by the Maduro regime, but by an independent and transparent process with international observers, but that is in the future,” he said.
After Machado was disqualified by Maduro from running for president in 2024, the opposition leader supported Edmundo González.
González won the election with almost 80 percent of the vote at the time, so his name is also in the conversation about who will lead Venezuela next.
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