Venezuelan coup leader María Corina Machado vows to privatize oil: US corporations will 'make a lot of money'

2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, a US government-funded far-right coup leader, vowed to privatize Venezuela's oil. US companies will "make a lot of money", she told Donald Trump Jr.

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was given to María Corina Machado, a far-right, pro-war Venezuelan opposition leader who has been funded by the US government for more than two decades.

Machado has helped to lead numerous violent coup attempts in Venezuela, in 2002, 2014, 2017, 2019, and again today.

She is now at the center of the US government’s regime-change war against Venezuela.

In an interview with Donald Trump Jr. in February 2025, Machado made it clear that she wants to privatize Venezuela’s state-owned oil industry and sell off the South American nation’s natural resources to US corporations.

Machado excitedly explained that, if Trump helped her overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, her new regime would “be the strongest ally in the region for the United States”.

“Venezuela is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies, of good people that are going to make a lot of money”, she vowed.

This is what Machado said to the son of the US president (emphasis added):

Forget about Saudi Arabia; forget about the Saudis. I mean, we have more oil, I mean, infinite potential.

And we’re going to open markets. We’re going to kick [out] the government from the oil sector. We’re going to privatize all our industry.

Venezuela has huge resources: oil, gas, minerals, land, technology. And, as you said before, we have a strategic location, you know, hours from the United States.

So we’re going to do this right. We know what we have to do.

…

And American companies are in, you know, a super strategic position to invest.

…

This country, Venezuela, is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies, of good people that are going to make a lot of money.

Venezuela has the world’s biggest oil reserves

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on Earth.

US corporations once profited from these resources, but Venezuela’s oil industry was nationalized by leftist former President Hugo Chávez, who launched the Bolivarian Revolution.

Machado wants to privatize Venezuela’s powerful state-owned oil company PDVSA.

Venezuela’s state-owned refinery company Citgo was already illegally seized by the US government during the first Trump administration’s coup attempt in 2019-20.

Ever since the first election of Chávez in 1998, the US government has tried to destabilize the Venezuelan government.

This has been a bipartisan strategy, under both Republicans and Democrats, including George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

All of these US administrations imposed illegal unilateral sanctions, backing coup attempts to try to violently overthrow the Venezuelan government, while funding and supporting far-right extremists like Machado.

María Corina Machado: The leader of Venezuela’s far-right extremist opposition

María Corina Machado has always been part of the most extreme, far-right faction of Venezuela’s anti-Chavista opposition.

In a previous article, Geopolitical Economy Report documented how Machado has been working with the Trump administration to wage war on Venezuela.

Machado has expressed support for the US military’s bombing of Venezuelan boats in international waters. The Trump administration has killed Venezuelans without charge or trial, on baseless claims that they were trafficking drugs.

Machado also strongly supports Israel as it has carried out genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and she eagerly backs the US-Israeli war on Iran.

In fact, in her interview with Donald Trump Jr., Machado made it clear that, if she were in power in Venezuela, her foreign policy would be entirely aligned with Washington. She condemned China, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

The rise of Machado in Venezuela’s opposition was not a natural, organic phenomenon; it was the product of US government support.

In the opposition primaries in Venezuela in 2012, Machado only won 3.66% of the vote. She was very unpopular, because she was seen as such an extreme, far-right figure.

The leader of the more moderate right-wing opposition in Venezuela was Henrique Capriles, who won 63.91% of the vote in the 2012 opposition primaries.

Capriles ran for president against both Chávez and Maduro. He is a decidedly right-wing politician. However, Capriles has publicly criticized the extremism of Machado and her far-right allies.

In an interview with British state media outlet BBC in August 2025, Capriles condemned extremist Venezuelan opposition figures who, like Machado, have called for a US military intervention in Venezuela.

“The large part of the people who want a military solution and there to be a US invasion do not live in Venezuela”, Capriles said. “They do not even consider what would be the consequences of that. Human lives are lost”.

Machado has strongly supported the US wars on Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine, and Iran. She does not care that millions of people died in these US imperial wars. She wants the same to happen in Venezuela, because she thinks it is her only chance to take power.

The growing influence of Machado in Venezuela’s right-wing opposition represents the increasing radicalization, intolerance, and violent tendencies of the anti-Chavista movement.

The US government has long preferred to support far-right extremist opposition figures like Machado, because they obediently serve the interests not only of Washington, but also of US corporations that are eager to exploit Venezuela’s natural resources.

Machado’s opposition organizations have been funded by CIA cutout the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) since at 2003, according to publicly available information.

Machado was invited to the White House to meet with George W. Bush in 2005. (This was just two years after he invaded Iraq in an illegal war of aggression.)

María Corina Machado thanks Trump for US support, insists now is “biggest opportunity” for regime change in Venezuela

In her February 2025 interview with Donald Trump Jr., Machado bragged that she is leading an effort to overthrow President Maduro.

“We will never surrender. We have a plan to get rid of Maduro. We are executing it, and we will win this battle”, she said.

Machado pledged to create a regime that is “going to be the strongest ally in the region for the United States and democracies in the western hemisphere”.

She then effusively praised the far-right US president, who is aggressively abusing Latino immigrants.

“For me, President Trump is on the side of the Venezuelan people, of democracy, and prosperity for the US, and for Venezuela as well”, Machado declared.

She thanked Donald Trump Jr. for the interview, saying “it gives me the opportunity to send my gratitude to President Trump through you”.

“Believe me, Maduro is terrified with Donald Trump, terrified”, Machado said.

“We have never had a bigger opportunity than we have right now, the biggest opportunity” for regime change, she added.

María Corina Machado thanks numerous US government officials, and Elon Musk, for supporting Venezuela’s far-right opposition

Machado also named the other US government officials who are working closely with Venezuela’s far-right opposition.

Among the people she identified was Marco Rubio, the second-most powerful person in the US government after Trump. Rubio is simultaneously serving as secretary of state and national security advisor.

For his entire life, Rubio has been dedicated to overthrowing the socialist government in Cuba, as well as the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Rubio is the son of wealthy right-wing Cubans who migrated to the United States. His parents actually left years before the 1959 Cuban Revolution, but Rubio has repeatedly lied about this, falsely claiming that his parents were so-called “refugees of communism”.

In addition to Rubio, Machado thanked neoconservative Mike Waltz for his support. Waltz previously served as Trump’s national security advisor, and is now the US ambassador to the UN.

In the interview with Donald Trump Jr., Machado made it clear that, if the US could help her overthrow Maduro, she would then seek to topple the leftist governments of Cuba and Nicaragua.

These were Machado’s remarks:

I have great relations, I have to say, with many members of the Trump administration.

Mike Waltz has been a true champion, an ally, of the Venezuelan cause. Of course, he is the national security advisor.

Marco Rubio, while he was a senator, was one of the strongest voices to defend the Venezuelan cause, and [against] Cuba and Nicaragua.

Because once Maduro goes, you will see Cuba and Nicaragua fall as well. And Latin America, and the Americas will be, for the first time, free of socialism, and communism, and tyrannies.

And certainly we have great friends in Congress, such as Senator Rick Scott, and the Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart, María Elvira Salazar, Carlos Giménez, the Speaker [Mike] Johnson — Johnson is a great supporter of our cause.

So we know we are surrounded by a great team that trusts Venezuela, and we trust them as well.

Another person mentioned in Machado’s interview with Donald Trump Jr. was Elon Musk, the world’s richest oligarch.

Trump Jr. revealed that Musk provided Venezuela’s far-right opposition with Starlink technology, as part of their destabilization operation against President Maduro.

“She [Machado] got 160 Starlink antennas from Elon Musk’s company”, Trump Jr. said.

Machado’s US-backed team used Musk’s technology to upload documents online claiming that Maduro supposedly stole the 2024 presidential election. There were many irregularities and outright fabrications in her alleged vote “tally sheets”.

“We were able to put them on a website thanks to the Starlink equipment that we have got secretly, [under]cover, in our country”, Machado told Trump Jr.

This was the latest example of Musk’s Starlink technology being used as a political weapon, to target the adversaries of the US empire.

Musk has also used Starlink to support Ukraine in the NATO proxy war against Russia, and he provided Starlink technology to US-backed protesters seeking regime change in Iran.