by Jacob G. Hornberger

March 16, 2026

One of the big mysteries surrounding Venezuela has been the failure of María Corina Machado, the leader of the dissident movement in Venezuela, to denounce the Trump administration and the U.S. national-security establishment. Indeed, not only has she failed to denounce the Empire, she actually is supporting it, even while continuing to lead the dissident movement in her country.

For many years, Machado has fiercely opposed the Chavista regime in her country. As an economic conservative, she opposes Chavista socialism and communism and favors a free-market economic system. She has also called for the release of political prisoners in her country, reflecting her commitment to civil liberties. From an economic and political standpoint, there is no doubt that the situation in Venezuela would significantly improve if Machado and her dissident movement were in charge of the government.

There is also no doubt that the overwhelming majority of the populace would elect Machado and others in her movement to replace the Chavista regime. In fact, they already did. In the 2024 election, the Chavistas prohibited Machado from running for president because they knew she would easily win. Thus, the dissidents chose a man named Edmundo González Urrutia to run in her stead.

González ended up winning around 80 percent of the vote. We know this because the dissidents were able to retrieve the tally sheets for many of the polling stations. In those where they were unable to do so, the Chavista regime, which controlled those particular tally sheets, refused to make them public.

One big problem, however, is that Venezuela, like the United States, is a national-security state — that is, it has an enormously powerful permanent military-intelligence part of the government. Another big problem is that the country has a strict system of gun control over the populace. Thus, the only people who have guns and other weapons are government officials, especially those in the national-security branch of the government.

Thus, when the Chavista regime ignored the results of the presidential election and falsely declared itself the winner, there was nothing the Venezuelan people could do about it. That’s because the national-security branch of the government was on the side of the Chavista regime. In a national-security state, the military-intelligence establishment wields the power to make the final call as to who is going to be president because the citizenry lack the ability to oppose it or oust it from power in a violent revolution.

In fact, when massive protests broke out, the Chavista regime and its national-security establishment were able to easily suppress them, either by killing or incarcerating and torturing protestors.

For her part, Machado has continued to oppose the Chavista regime. But she has run into an enormous hurdle: President Trump and his national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

For years, the U.S. Empire, like Machado, has been fiercely opposing the Chavista regime, calling it a socialist-communist, narco-terrorist regime. They even indicted the president of the country, Nicolás Maduro, and his Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello, for violating U.S. drug laws. They also targeted Venezuela’s unelected vice-president, Delcy Rodriguez, with a DEA drug-war investigation.

In fact, regime change in Venezuela has long been the goal of the U.S. Empire. That’s what the Empire’s brutal and vicious system of economic sanctions was all about. Its goal was to inflict massive economic harm, even death, on the Venezuelan people in the hope that they would rise up, violently oust the Chavista regime, and replace it with a pro-U.S. regime.

Thus, for decades, the U.S. Empire and the Venezuelan dissident movement, led by Machado, have been on the same page.

And then something dramatic, even shocking, took place. After kidnapping Maduro and renditioning him to New York City to face the drug-war charges against him, the U.S. government has now aligned itself with the Chavista socialist-communist, narco-terrorist regime that Maduro headed. The U.S. government, including the Pentagon and the CIA, are now using their power to maintain the Chavista regime in existence and actually partner with the regime.

Indeed, Trump recently stated, “We have a great situation going over there, with a wonderful president, a wonderful president-elect, Delcy. And she is doing a great job, and they are all doing a good job.”

Not only has Rodriguez never been elected president or vice-president (she was appointed vice president by Maduro), she is a self-avowed Marxist who, as Machado has pointed out, is simply carrying out Trump’s orders, especially knowing that Trump could, on a moment’s notice, order his forces to kidnap her and Cabello and bring them to New York City to stand trial with Maduro for drug-war violations.

Trump’s praise of Rodriguez brings to mind his statement during his first term in office regarding North Korea’s brutal and ruthless communist dictator, Kim Jong Un: “He wrote me beautiful letters…. We fell in love.”

It is impossible to overstate how bizarre this new relationship between the U.S. Empire and the Chavista regime is. Remember: This is a fierce communist-socialist regime! The U.S. national-security establishment justified its entire Cold War racket under the rubric of saving America from the Reds. Indeed, the Empire is still waging its deadly and destructive decades-old Cold War antics against the Cuban people, targeting them with death and destruction with its economic and oil embargo.

What’s the official rationale for this bizarre behavior? U.S. officials say that Machado would bring “instability” to Venezuela because, they say, the regime’s national-security establishment would never accept her. So, it seems that the notion is that in a national-security state, it’s better to let the national-security branch of the government have its way. Otherwise, there will be “instability.”

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, no one ever anticipated that this type of thing would happen. Given its long history of regime-change operations, everyone, including Machado, naturally assumed that Trump and the Empire would use their massive military might to oust the Chavista regime from power and replace it with Machado’s dissident group — i.e., regime change.

But even more bizarre than the U.S. Empire’s actions has been the response of Machado and her supporters. They continue to support the U.S. Empire, even while continuing to oppose the communist-socialist Chavista regime with which the Empire is now partnering. Indeed, Machado even gave her Nobel Prize to Trump, who accepted it!

Why? Why aren’t Machado and her allies openly and publicly condemning the U.S. government for its despicable and immoral partnership with the Chavista regime she and allies have long opposed and continue to oppose? Why is she instead bowing obsequiously to Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment? Indeed, why is Machado standing with U.S. and Latin American conservative leaders who have vowed to deport Venezuelan citizens who have fled the horrific economic conditions in Venezuela in an effort to save themselves from the vise of Venezuelan socialism and U.S. sanctions?

It’s time for Machado to stand up for Venezuela and to stand up for what’s right. That necessarily means not only opposing the Chavista regime but also the U.S. Empire that is now maintaining, supporting, and partnering with it. That’s what real leadership is all about — the courage to stand up for what’s right, even if that means standing against Trump, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. She needs to call on the U.S. Empire to exit Venezuela once and for all, lift all its sanctions, and leave Venezuela to the Venezuelan people. Machado’s embarrassingly subservient support of Trump and the U.S. Empire is the wrong way to go. For his part, Trump should do the right thing and give Machado back her Nobel Prize.