Three members of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Cuban-American congressional mafia gave a press conference in Miami in the evening of Jan. 3 to demand that Venezuelan opposition leader Corina Machado, a longtime asset of the Anglo-American intelligence apparatus, be crowned president of Venezuela immediately. Then next, having removed Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, the U.S. should proceed to overthrow the Cuban and Nicaraguan governments.
Mario c-Balart, Carlos Giménez, and Maria Elvira Salazar, all Cuban-American Republicans from Florida, thanked Trump for removing Maduro and said that while they agreed that Venezuelans should have a say in choosing their next leader, they were hopeful that Maria Corina Machado would become the next President. Trump had rejected her as an option, arguing she lacks full support of the Venezuelan people. [According to the Miami Herald,](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article314146619.html#storylink=cpy ) Díaz-Balart reported he “was convinced that the tyranny in the anti-American, narco-terrorist regime in Venezuela, the tyranny in Cuba and also the tyrannical dictatorship in Nicaragua would not survive another four years” with Donald Trump as President. “What we are seeing is that the first of those tyrannies has not survived President Trump,” he said. “The next two? Their days are also [numbered].”
Representative Salazar, who has worked closely with Machado, argued that the Venezuelan opposition organized by Machado and her party, “are a legitimate force inside Venezuela. So we are supporting her, and we are supporting everything that the opposition forces, on the civil side, decide to do.” Díaz-Balart said that regardless of how a new President is chosen, either through new elections or recognizing the 2024 ones, in which Machado was not officially a candidate, he’s convinced that Maria Corina Machado will be the next democratically-elected President of Venezuela.
