Machado

In the early days of President Trump’s second term, the U.S. appeared keen to cooperate with Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian leader. Special envoy Ric Grenell met Maduro, working with him to coordinate deportation flights to Caracas, a prisoner exchange deal and an agreement allowing Chevron to drill Venezuelan oil.

Grenell told disappointed members of Venezuela’s opposition that Trump’s domestic goals took priority over efforts to promote democracy. “We’re not interested in regime change,” Grenell told the group, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

But Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of State, had a different vision.

In a parallel call with María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, two leaders of the opposition, Rubio affirmed U.S. support “for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela” and called González “the rightful president” of the beleaguered nation after Maduro rigged last year’s election in his favor.

Rubio, now also serving as national security advisor, has grown closer to Trump and crafted an aggressive new policy toward Maduro that has brought Venezuela and the United States to the brink of military confrontation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio whispers to President Trump during a roundtable meeting at the White House on Oct. 8, 2025.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Grenell has been sidelined, two sources told The Times, as the U.S. conducts an unprecedented campaign of deadly strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug boats — and builds up military assets in the Caribbean. Trump said Wednesday that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in the South American nation, and that strikes on land targets could be next.

“I think Venezuela is feeling the heat,” he said.

The pressure campaign marks a major victory for Rubio, the son of Cuban emigres and an unexpected power player in the administration who has managed to sway top leaders of the isolationist MAGA movement to his lifelong effort to topple Latin America’s leftist authoritarians.

“It’s very clear that Rubio has won,” said James B. Story, who served as ambassador to Venezuela under President Biden. “The administration is applying military pressure in the hope that somebody inside of the regime renders Maduro to justice, either by exiling him, sending him to the United States or sending him to his maker.”

In a recent public message to Trump, Maduro acknowledged that Rubio is now driving White House policy: “You have to be careful because Marco Rubio wants your hands stained with blood, with South American blood, Caribbean blood, Venezuelan blood,” Maduro said.

As a senator from Florida, Rubio represented exiles from three leftist autocracies — Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — and for years he has made it his mission to weaken their governments. He says his family could not return to Cuba after Fidel Castro’s revolution seven decades ago. He has long maintained that eliminating Maduro would deal a fatal blow to Cuba, whose economy has been buoyed by billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil in the face of punishing U.S. sanctions.

In 2019, Rubio pushed Trump to back Juan Guaidó, a Venezuelan opposition leader who sought unsuccessfully to topple Maduro.

Rubio later encouraged Trump to publicly support Machado, who was barred from the ballot in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, and who last week was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her pro-democracy efforts. González, who ran in Machado’s place, won the election, according to vote tallies gathered by the opposition, yet Maduro declared victory.

Rubio was convinced that only military might would bring change to Venezuela, which has been plunged into crisis under Maduro’s rule, with a quarter of the population fleeing poverty, violence and political repression.

But there was a hitch. Trump has repeatedly vowed to not intervene in the politics of other nations, telling a Middle Eastern audience in May that the U.S. “would no longer be giving you lectures on how to live.”

Denouncing decades of U.S. foreign policy, Trump complained that “the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand.”

To counter that sentiment, Rubio painted Maduro in a new light that he hoped would spark interest from Trump, who has been fixated on combating immigration, illegal drugs and Latin American cartels since his first presidential campaign.

Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, right, and opposition leader María Corina Machado greet supporters during a campaign rally in Valencia before the country’s presidential election in 2024.

(Ariana Cubillos / Associated Press)

Going after Maduro, Rubio argued, was not about promoting democracy or a change of governments. It was striking a drug kingpin fueling crime in American streets, an epidemic of American overdoses, and a flood of illegal migration to America’s borders.

Rubio tied Maduro to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang whose members the secretary of State says are “worse than Al Qaeda.”

“Venezuela is governed by a narco-trafficking organization that has empowered itself as a nation state,” he said during his Senate confirmation hearing.

Meanwhile, prominent members of Venezuela’s opposition pushed the same message. “Maduro is the head of a narco-terrorist structure,” Machado told Fox News last month.

Security analysts and U.S. intelligence officials suggest that the links between Maduro and Tren de Aragua are overblown.

A declassified memo by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found no evidence of widespread cooperation between Maduro’s government and the gang. It also said Tren de Aragua does not pose a threat to the U.S.

The gang does not traffic fentanyl, and the Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that just 8% of cocaine that reaches the U.S. passes through Venezuelan territory.

Still, Rubio’s strategy appears to have worked.

In July, Trump declared that Tren de Aragua was a terrorist group led by Maduro — and then ordered the Pentagon to use military force against cartels that the U.S. government had labeled terrorists.

Trump deployed thousands of U.S. troops and a small armada of ships and warplanes to the Caribbean and has ordered strikes on five boats off the coast of Venezuela, resulting in 24 deaths. The administration says the victims were “narco-terrorists” but has provided no evidence.

Elliott Abrams, a veteran diplomat who served as special envoy to Venezuela in Trump’s first term, said he believes the White House will carry out limited strikes in Venezuela.

“I think the next step is that they’re going to hit something in Venezuela — and I don’t mean boots on the ground. That’s not Trump,” Abrams said. “It’s a strike, and then it’s over. That’s very low risk to the United States.”

He continued: “Now, would it be nice if that kind of activity spurred a colonel to lead a coup? Yeah, it would be nice. But the administration is never going to say that.”

Even if Trump refrains from a ground invasion, there are major risks.

“If it’s a war, then what is the war’s aim? Is it to overthrow Maduro? Is it more than Maduro? Is it to get a democratically elected president and a democratic regime in power?” said John Yoo, a professor of law at UC Berkeley, who served as a top legal advisor to the George W. Bush administration. “The American people will want to know what’s the end state, what’s the goal of all of this.”

“Whenever you have two militaries bristling that close together, there could be real action,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at the think tank Chatham House. “Trump is trying to do this on the cheap. He’s hoping maybe he won’t have to commit. But it’s a slippery slope. This could draw the United States into a war.”

Sabatini and others added that even if the U.S. pressure drives out Maduro, what follows is far from certain.

Venezuela is dominated by a patchwork of guerrilla and paramilitary groups that have enriched themselves with gold smuggling, drug trafficking and other illicit activities. None have incentive to lay down arms.

And the country’s opposition is far from unified.

Machado, who dedicated her Nobel Prize to Trump in a clear effort to gain his support, says she is prepared to govern Venezuela. But there are others — both in exile and in Maduro’s administration — who would like to lead the country.

Machado supporter Juan Fernandez said anything would be better than maintaining the status quo.

“Some say we’re not prepared, that a transition would cause instability,” he said. “How can Maduro be the secure choice when 8 million Venezuelans have left, when there is no gasoline, political persecution and rampant inflation?”

Fernandez praised Rubio for pushing the Venezuela issue toward “an inflection point.”

What a difference, he said, to have a decision-maker in the White House with family roots in another country long oppressed by an authoritarian regime.

“He perfectly understands our situation,” Fernandez said. “And now he has one of the highest positions in the United States.”

Linthicum reported from Mexico City, Wilner from Dallas and Ceballos from Washington. Special correspondent Mery Mogollón in Caracas contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday despite jockeying from his fellow Republicans, various world leaders and — most vocally — himself.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it was honoring Machado “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Machado, however, said she wanted to dedicate the win to Trump, along with the people of her country, as she praised the president for support of her cause.

The White House responded bitterly to the news of the award Friday, with communications director Steven Cheung saying members of “the Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace” because they didn’t recognize Trump, especially after the Gaza ceasefire deal his administration helped strike this week.

“He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” Cheung wrote on social media.

The White House did not comment on Machado’s recognition, but Trump on social media shared Machado’s post praising him.

Her opposition to President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela aligns with the Trump administration’s own stance on Venezuela, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously praised her as “the personification of resilience, tenacity, and patriotism.”

Trump, who has long coveted the prestigious prize, has been outspoken about his desire for the honor during both of his presidential terms, particularly lately as he takes credit for ending conflicts around the world. The Republican president had expressed doubts that the Nobel committee would ever grant him the award.

“They’ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I saved a lot of lives,” Trump said Thursday.

Although Trump received nominations for the prize, many of them occurred after the Feb. 1 deadline for the 2025 award, which fell just a week and a half into his second term. His name was, however, put forward in December by Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York, her office said in a statement, for his brokering of the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states in 2020.

A long history of lobbying for the prize

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said the committee has seen various campaigns in its long history of awarding the peace prize.

“We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what for them leads to peace,” he said. “This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates, and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”

The peace prize, first awarded in 1901, was created partly to encourage ongoing peace efforts. Alfred Nobel stipulated in his will that the prize should go to someone “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Three sitting U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and Barack Obama in 2009. Jimmy Carter won the prize in 2002, a full two decades after leaving office. Former Vice President Al Gore received the prize in 2007.

Obama, a Democrat who was a focus of Trump’s attacks well before the Republican was elected, won the prize early in his tenure as president.

“They gave it to Obama for doing absolutely nothing but destroying our country,” Trump said Thursday.

Wars in Gaza and elsewhere

As one of his reasons for deserving the award, Trump often says he has ended seven wars, though some of the conflicts the president claims to have resolved were merely tensions and his role in easing them is disputed.

But while there is hope for the end to Israel and Hamas’ war, with Israel saying a ceasefire agreement with Hamas came into effect Friday, much remains uncertain about the aspects of the broader plan, including whether and how Hamas will disarm and who will govern Gaza. And little progress seems to have been made in the Russia-Ukraine war, a conflict Trump claimed during the 2024 campaign that he could end in one day.

As Trump pushes for peaceful resolutions to conflicts abroad, the country he governs remains deeply divided and politically fraught. Trump has kicked off what he hopes to be the largest deportation program in American history to remove immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. He is using the levers of government, including the Justice Department, to go after his perceived political enemies. He has sent the military into U.S. cities over local opposition to stop crime and crack down on immigration enforcement.

He withdrew the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, dealing a blow to worldwide efforts to combat global warming. He touched off global trade wars with his on-again, off-again tariffs, which he wields as a threat to bend other countries and companies to his will. He asserted presidential war powers by declaring cartels to be unlawful combatants and launching lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean that he alleged were carrying drugs.

The full list of people nominated is secret, but anyone who submits a nomination is free to talk about it. Trump’s detractors say supporters, foreign leaders and others are submitting Trump’s name for nomination for the prize — and announcing it publicly — not because he deserves it but because they see it as a way to manipulate him and stay in his good graces.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who this summer said he was nominating Trump for the prize, on Friday reposted Cheung’s response with the comment: “The Nobel Committee talks about peace. President @realDonaldTrump makes it happen.”

“The facts speak for themselves,” Netanyahu’s office said on X. “President #Trump deserves it.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sent troops to Ukraine in 2022 and has sought to show alignment with Trump, told reporters in Taijikistan on Friday that it’s not up to him to judge whether Trump should have received the prize, but he praised the ceasefire deal for Gaza.

He also criticized the Nobel Committee’s prior decisions, saying it has in the past awarded the prize to those who have done little to advance global peace.

Putin’s remarks nearly echoed the comments Trump made about Obama, and the U.S. leader responded to his Russian counterpart’s praise by posting on social media: “Thank you to President Putin!”

Others who formally submitted a nomination for Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize — but after this year’s deadline — include Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Pakistan’s government, all citing his work in helping end conflicts in their regions.

Pesoli and Price write for the Associated Press. AP writers Chris Megerian in Washington, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

Oct. 10 (UPI) — María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader who has worked to restore democracy to her country, won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday.

The committee hailed Machado as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times” for her work to promote human rights and attempts to end the dictatorship of President Nicolás Maduro.

“Ms. Machado has been a key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided — an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government,” a news release from the committee said.

“This is precisely what lies at the heart of democracy: our shared willingness to defend the principles of popular rule, even though we disagree. At a time when democracy is under threat, it is more important than ever to defend this common ground.”

As a leader of the Vente Venezuela, a centrist liberal political party, Machado ran for president in 2011 and 2024. The former National Assembly member was the candidate chosen to run against Maduro, representing a variety of opposition groups in the 2024 election.

The Venezuelan government, however, banned her from participating in the election for her earlier activism against the Maduro regime. The ban was instituted for 15 years. The government also accused Machado of planning to assassinate Maduro.

In 2002, Machado was a co-founder of Súmate, an election-monitoring organization that trained volunteers to observe polling locations to ensure all votes were fairly and accurately counted in Venezuelan elections.

“It was a choice of ballots over bullets,” she said of her involvement in the organization.

She later left Súmate to prevent the group from becoming politicized.

“María Corina Machado meets all three criteria stated in Alfred Nobel‘s will for the selection of a Peace Prize laureate,” the Nobel Committee said.

“She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarization of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy.”