Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who received the Nobel Peace Prize after fleeing the country when Nicolas Maduro reportedly stole an election in 2024, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that she’s going back. Machado praised President Trump’s pressure campaign against the Maduro regime, calling it long overdue: “I absolutely support President Trump’s strategy, and we, the Venezuelan people, are very grateful to him and to his administration, because I believe he is a champion of freedom in this hemisphere.” “I think that he has finally put Venezuela in where it should be, in terms of a priority for the United States national security,” she said about attacks on alleged drug smugglers and the seizure of an oil tanker. “We are facing not a conventional dictatorship. This is a very complex criminal structure that has turned Venezuela into a safe haven of international crime and terrorist activities, starting with Russia, Iran, Cuba, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Colombian guerrillas, the drug cartels operating freely and directed in partnership with Maduro and his regime.” “We need to increase the cost of staying in power by force. Once you arrive to that point in which the cost of staying in power is higher than the cost of leaving power, the regime will fall apart, and it’s the moment where we, you know, advance into a negotiated transition,” she said. You can watch the full interview below this segment of transcript:

MARGARET BRENNAN: You say you’re going back home. I know you sent your own children out of Venezuelan territory in order to protect them, your sons, your daughter. I read you hadn’t even seen your daughter in 16 months. That’s an incredible sacrifice for anyone. Are they concerned that you plan to return to Venezuela? When are you going? MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Of course, they are concerned as any other Venezuelan child that has their parents or relatives back in our country, because the regime, as I said, has persecuted, tortured, killed, disappeared, thousands of Venezuelans, and recently it has turned even more violent because, you know when, when a criminal regime is falling apart and they know their days are numbered, they turn even more aggressive, even more violent. Just a couple of weeks ago, a 16 year old girl was kidnapped and taken away to prison just because they were looking for her brother, and since they couldn’t find her brother, they took Samantha. So this is the kinds of actions that are currently happening in my country. So yes, my family is concerned, but they know I have said that I will be where I am more useful to our cause, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. MARGARET BRENNAN: You believe it’s important to help the cause from inside the country right now. Can you help us understand what is going on, because we are seeing here in the US an increase in the pressure campaign. More sanctions on Venezuelan individuals and vessels. We saw an armed seizure of a vessel carrying oil out of Venezuela. Selling oil on the black market is really important money for the Maduro regime. Do you endorse this idea of more seizures and possibly even a blockade? MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Look, I absolutely support President Trump’s strategy, and we, the Venezuelan people, are very grateful to him and to his administration, because I believe he is a champion of freedom in this hemisphere. And that’s why, and I say this from Oslo right now, I had dedicated this award to him because I think that he finally has put Venezuela in where it should be, in terms of a priority for the United States national security. And we do support these actions becaus we are facing, not a conventional dictatorship. This is a very complex criminal structure that has turned Venezuela into a safe haven of international crime and terrorist activities, starting with Russia, Iran, Cuba, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Colombian guerrillas, the drug cartels operating freely and directed in partnership with Maduro and his regime. And as every criminal structure is suffers, is when the inflows from their criminal activities are cut. And these, in the case of Maduro regime, comes from the oil black market to drug trafficking, gold smuggling, arm smuggling, even human smuggling and trafficking. So that’s what we believe, it was so important to apply, you know, law enforcement, and we have been asking this for years, so it’s finally happening. That’s why I believe the regime has its days numbered. MARGARET BRENNAN: It sounds like you support more sanctions and possibly more seizures of oil, but isn’t there a risk that cutting off money will further hurt the already impoverished people of Venezuela? Isn’t that a risk? MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Of course. What we’re doing is for the well being of the Venezuelan people. What we want to do is to save lives, but Maduro was the one who declared a war on the Venezuelan people. A war we didn’t want. A war we are suffering with hundreds of thousands of killings and forced executions in the last years. And right now, I want to be very clear with the international community, the resources Maduro gets are not going to schools or hospitals in Venezuela a teacher earns $ 1 a day. Pensions are less than $ 1 a month. Our children go twice a week to school. The sources, the cash the regime gets from these illegal activities goes to buy arms, to pay gang members to spy and infiltrate and to even further increase their illegal narcotics activities and so on. So these resources are not going for, to- towards the people. They’re going for corruption and crime. MARGARET BRENNAN: So it sounds like you want even more seizures and a blockade. Is that correct? MARIA CORINA MACHADO: We want every legal action through law enforcement approach, not only from the United States, also from other Caribbean, Latin American and European countries that further block the illegal activities of the regime. Why? Because we need to increase the cost of staying in power by force. Once you arrive to that point in which the cost of staying in power is higher than the cost of leaving power, the regime will fall apart, and it’s the moment where we, you know, advance into a negotiated transition. Which is what in the beginning we offered Maduro when we won the presidential election by landslide last year, but he not only refused that option, but he, as you know, unleashed the worst, most brutal repression wave we’ve seen in our history. MARGARET BRENNAN: And 8 million Venezuelans have fled– MARIA CORINA MACHADO: That’s correct. MARGARET BRENNAN: –since he came to power during that time, but in terms of the diplomacy, President Trump spoke with Maduro himself last month. We haven’t seen any evidence though, that diplomacy, a negotiated exit like you mentioned, is happening. Are you seeing diplomatic success? MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Well, in the last years, Venezuela has seen 17 dialog initiatives, not once, not twice, 17. Every single time the opposition or our allies or the United States have complied with every single thing we offered, the regime of the country has violated every single thing they offered on their own part. What did they get? They got time, they got legitimacy, they got money, and that’s precisely what they think they can get again, once again. But certainly, things have changed very much in the last months, Venezuela is total different country. I mean, Maduro is weaker than ever. The Armed Forces, police are certainly divided and fractured, and our country is united, cohesive, and we finally have the administration, in this case, President Trump with a clear strategy that truly represents a credible threat for the regime. So if we had ever had a chance to finally move ahead into, towards democracy in our country, it’s today.

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