CIA chief visits Maduro successor as Machado vows to become Venezuela’s president

The CIA chief whose agents reputedly played a key role in abducting Nicolás Maduro has flown to Venezuela to meet his successor as the sidelined opposition leader, María Corina Machado, vowed she would become the country’s first elected female president.Machado’s comments were broadcast on Friday, a day after she handed her Nobel peace prize medal to Donald Trump in recognition of what she called a principled and decisive move against Maduro, whom US special forces snatched on 3 January.The conservative politician predicted freedom was coming to her South American homeland after years of economic mayhem and authoritarianism under Maduro. “And I believe I will be elected, when the right time comes, as president of Venezuela – the first woman president of Venezuela,” she told Fox News.Despite Machado’s bullishness, experts say Trump has marginalised her opposition movement since his pre-dawn assault on Caracas momentarily ignited hopes of imminent democratic change.Rather than seeking to install Machado, whose opposition movement is widely believed to have beaten Maduro in the 2024 presidential election, Trump gave his blessing to Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, calling her a “terrific person”. Rodríguez is governing as acting president with support from other key Maduro allies, including the feared interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, and has vowed to improve ties with the US.“I’m sure the opposition is biting their tongue because this is just brutal for them,” said Eva Golinger, a US lawyer who advised Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez. “They’re sidelined … They have no role in what’s going on. They’re out of the game for now.”Trump’s decision to back Rodríguez 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.Trump officials have been open about their decision to strike a deal with Maduro’s closest allies, many of whom have been implicated in serious human rights violations.“We 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’ve got to prevent in the meantime is a collapse of the nation,” the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, told CBS News on Sunday.Golinger believed Machado hoped to squeeze her way back into Trump’s plans by offering her 18-carat medal in a golden picture frame to a man obsessed with “everything gilded and golden”.María Corina Machado presents Donald Trump with her Nobel peace prize medal Photograph: White House/Getty ImagesBut she doubted the move would work, noting how Rodríguez’s administration was already complying with one of Trump’s key demands – opening up Venezuela’s vast oil reserves to US companies. The first US deportation flight since Maduro’s capture landed in Caracas on Friday carrying 199 Venezuelans.“Delcy is giving him everything he wants. He has no reason to disrupt the situation – and he’s certainly not going to let María Corina Machado come in and try to shake things up,” Golinger said.“I’m sure he sees her as weak. She’s come [to Washington] and grovelled and handed over her Nobel peace prize … and she went out the back door … I would put money on the fact that should Delcy come to the White House, she will get a formal reception.”Imdat Oner, a former Turkish diplomat in Venezuela who is a fellow at Florida International University’s Jack D Gordon institute for public policy, also doubted Machado’s gift would change Trump’s mind.“They bet fully on the Trump administration … [that] Trump would remove the whole regime from power and open a path for the opposition. But this didn’t happen,” he said.“Machado’s hands are tied … she definitely understands that she has already been sidelined and she will not be part of the game,” he said, calling the idea of her becoming president “completely out of the question” for now.If Machado’s 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 Rodríguez and members of her “interim administration”.Less than two weeks earlier, Ratcliffe’s agents had played a key role in infiltrating Maduro’s inner-circle to pinpoint his location so he could be seized from what should have been Venezuela’s most fortified address. Their information was reportedly so strong that they even knew what food Maduro was eating and which pets he had.One US official told the New York Times Ratcliffe had gone to Caracas to “to deliver the message that the United States looks forward to an improved working relationship” with the embattled remnant’s of Maduro’s regime led by Rodríguez.Speaking during a state of the union address that Maduro had expected to be giving himself, Rodríguez said their country “had the right” to good relations with the US and that she was willing to travel to Washington to hold talks with representatives of the “lethal nuclear power”.“The pretext of any kind of anti-imperialist socialist movement [has] really just been stripped away. It’s ridiculous,” said Golinger.“You can’t claim in the morning … that you’re an anti-imperialist sovereign movement and then receive the director of the CIA in the [presidential] palace after 10 days earlier they bombed Caracas and executed an extraordinary rendition of the sitting head of state.“It’s just farcical … what we’re witnessing is a clear betrayal of everything that [the Chavismo] movement stood for.”