House Republican Breaks With Trump on Nobel Prize Winner Leading Venezuela

Republican Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) has broken with President Donald Trump by declaring that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado will win the presidency in an upcoming election.

Shortly after ousting Nicolas Maduro from power on Saturday, Trump expressed his doubts about Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her reform efforts in Venezuela.

“I think it’d be very tough for her to be the leader,” Trump said. “She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect, within the country She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”

Instead, Trump said the U.S. would govern the Latin American country with the cooperation of Delcy Rodriguez from Maduro’s administration, who promoted herself to acting president.

Fox News’s Martha MacCallum asked Salazar about her trip to Oslo, Norway, with other Machado supporters in December.

“I know you traveled to Oslo with her. Was she disappointed to hear that they’re elevating — they’re allowing the elevation of the vice president to run the country for now?” MacCallum asked.

“Well, I have not been able to talk to her, but I do know that she is very much pro-America and she dedicated that Nobel Peace Prize to the president,” Salazar began. “We have to put things into context, and the opposition within Venezuela understands that.”

Salazar continued:

We need this Delcy lady, who swore herself in, and that we have to work with her for now. Marco Rubio said it: It’s been 48 hours. Let’s give us a few months until we create the stability and I’m sure that María Corina Machado, who is the leader of the democratic opposition, will go back in, be able to put together the process so you can have free and fair elections with international observers. I’m sure she will be the nominee Maduro did not allow her to be, the presidential nominee. I’m sure she’s going to win.

The Washington Post reported Monday that Trump snubbed Machado because she committed the “ultimate sin” by accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, instead of insisting it be given to Trump.

“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” an anonymous source told The Post.

Watch the clip above via The Story With Martha MacCallum on Fox News.