MACHADO RETURNS TO A VENEZUELA WITHOUT FREE ELECTIONS — AND TRUMP HAS ALREADY TAKEN THE OIL

The Nobel laureate reappeared in Lara state after seven failed attempts. Delcy Rodríguez has overstayed her interim term and set no election date.

María Corina Machado, Venezuela's opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace laureate, reappeared inside Venezuela on Sunday morning after more than ten months in exile and seven failed attempts to get home, posting on X: "I am here. With you."

The Washington Post placed her at the Santa Rosa Church in Lara state, west of Caracas. She gave no details on how she entered. Edmundo González, the opposition candidate whose 2024 tally sheets showed he beat Nicolás Maduro, posted that he would be at her side "very soon."

Machado left Venezuela in December to collect the Nobel in Oslo. On January 3, Delta Force seized Maduro and flew him to the USS Iwo Jima. Trump said the same day: "We're going to run the country." Narativ reported on January 4 that the deal taking shape sold out Venezuela's democratic aspirations for an oil arrangement.

Trump has a case on Venezuela. Maduro is gone. Delcy Rodríguez's interim government has freed hundreds of political prisoners and reopened the country to US companies. And the most popular politician in Venezuela — the polls still say so — could finally come home.

To the victor go the spoils. The ledger, ten months on: on January 7, Trump announced Venezuela would hand over 30 to 50 million barrels of oil, with revenue controlled "by me, as President of the United States." The Energy Department sold the first cargo a week later for $500 million. On August 28 he announced "THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY": majority US control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan reserves, 25 years, 17 fields. He did not disclose the terms. Rodríguez did: $19 from every barrel sold to the United States goes back to Caracas. She called it sovereignty.

Rodríguez is Maduro's former vice president. In Trump's August post she is the "Highly Respected Interim President" who worked with Rubio and Hegseth, "at my direction," to secure the fields. The Associated Press reports she has exceeded the term she was authorized to serve as acting president. She has set no election date. Trump's press secretary said in January he hopes to see Venezuelan elections "one day." Her supporters marched in Caracas on Thursday demanding one.

Machado's advisers say the government closed the airspace to her. In late September, while Rodríguez was at the UN in New York, her government refused Machado entry three times in one day, her team says. Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied this month that Washington blocked her return. Rodríguez warned earlier this year that Machado "will have to answer before Venezuela" if she came back.

Now she is back, and Rodríguez has a decision: arrest the country's most popular politician, or name a date. Her return also hands Trump a win nine days before Americans vote — the Nobel laureate who gave him her medal is home, and he announced the oil deal with gas prices rising toward the same election. It is hardly a return to democracy. Venezuela has its laureate home and still has no date to vote.

Machado gave Trump her Nobel medal in January. Trump took the oil. She came home for the vote.