{"id":17571,"date":"2026-01-11T20:31:59","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T20:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/rep-salazar-touts-venezuelas-machado-before-her-visit\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T20:31:59","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T20:31:59","slug":"rep-salazar-touts-venezuelas-machado-before-her-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/rep-salazar-touts-venezuelas-machado-before-her-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Rep. Salazar touts Venezuela’s Machado before her visit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar<\/a> on Sunday said Venezuela\u2019s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has \u201cearned\u201d enough to receive President Donald Trump\u2019s backing as the South American country recovers from the capture of Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe proved to the international community that they, the opposition forces, had won the election,\u201d the Florida Republican told CBS\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Salazar, who said she was in contact with Machado during the time she was in hiding during Maduro\u2019s rule, added that Trump will be \u201dhighly, highly pleased\u201d with Machado when she visits Washington this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am sure that she will have a very good, long, solid conversation with the President,\u201d Salazar said. \u201cI think we are going to welcome her in Congress, and I’m sure that President Trump is going to be highly, highly pleased with that meeting.<\/p>\n

Salazar\u2019s optimism comes as the organization that oversees the Nobel Peace Prize announced Machado cannot give her recent award to Trump.<\/p>\n

Machado won the prestigious prize in October, and quickly dedicated the award to the president. Trump had repeatedly expressed his desire to be awarded the prize, particularly in light of his work to end the Israel-Hamas war and other conflicts.<\/p>\n

Trump declined to endorse Machado as the nation’s new leader in the wake of the raid that netted Maduro and left Venezuela at least temporarily leaderless. But Salazar on Sunday said Machado \u201cis part of the transition\u201d in Venezuela now that Maduro is no longer in power \u2014 a sharp difference from Trump\u2019s previous statements that the U.S. will run Venezuela.<\/p>\n

Salazar said there are things that the U.S. may not know about what is happening in Venezuela under Maduro\u2019s allies, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez and Diosdado Cabello.<\/p>\n

Still, her optimism continued as she said she is confident American prisoners will soon be released.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not want to make any mistakes and I am sure that the political prisoners will be coming out and that we’re not giving them, meaning Diosdado and Delcy, any type of leeway for them to really run the country,\u201d said Salazar. \u201cWe will see. I happened two, three weeks ago. Let’s give them a little bit more time before we see more results.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar on Sunday said Venezuela\u2019s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has \u201cearned\u201d enough to receive President Donald Trump\u2019s backing as the South American country recovers from the capture of Nicolas Maduro. \u201cShe proved to the international community that they, the opposition forces, had won the election,\u201d the Florida Republican told CBS\u2019 \u201cFace […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}