2026 was supposed to be María Corina Machado’s year. Hot off receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, she must have strongly suspected (or outright knew) that Donald Trump had Maduro squarely in his crosshairs and that regime change in Venezuela was on the cards.
With that Nobel Prize under her belt, the fawning support of both Western liberal and conservative media, and her own public praise and support of Donald Trump, Machado probably assumed she’d waltz into Caracas and be installed as interim president pending an election, which the United States would do everything in its power to ensure she’d win.
