Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee were wholeheartedly endorsing María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, as they exited a closed-door meeting with her on Capitol Hill on Tuesday evening.
Despite President Trump’s dismissal of her as a potential leader of Venezuela, Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said she had “all the right stuff” to be the country’s next president. “Now, the next step, obviously: free and fair elections,” Mr. McCaul, the former chairman of the committee, said, adding, “We look forward to working with her.”
“She is exactly the leader to lead Venezuela forward,” said Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York. “There needs to be a transition towards a democracy and towards an election, and I think that should happen in short order.”
Representative Brian Mast, Republican of Florida, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he was “hard pressed to see that there’s somebody else with a greater vision” for Venezuela than Ms. Machado.
Mr. Mast said the United States would play a role when Venezuela does hold its next election because the “stakes are huge,” with the country being “in our backyard.”
The meeting on Tuesday lasted over an hour. Near the end, a loud burst of applause could be heard from the hallway outside the room where lawmakers had gathered to hear from Ms. Machado. Her latest visit to Capitol Hill came after she had a similar bipartisan discussion with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday.
Republicans and Democrats on Tuesday called for prompt, free and fair elections to replace Nicolás Maduro, the longtime authoritarian leader seized by the U.S. military.
But their unified cry was at odds with Mr. Trump’s focus on oil, not democracy, in the wake of Mr. Maduro’s capture. Mr. Trump opted not to support Ms. Machado to lead Venezuela, and called her “a very nice woman” but one who “doesn’t have the respect” to govern, even though her party had beaten Mr. Maduro’s in a 2024 election. Instead, Mr. Trump and his top diplomats have focused on working with Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s interim leader.
Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the panel, said Tuesday that Ms. Machado was “very clear” that Ms. Rodríguez, a vice president under Mr. Maduro, “is not the person that will be galvanizing for the Venezuelan people.”
Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Democrat of California, said Ms. Machado wanted U.S. intervention in Venezuela to continue. She also said that Ms. Machado would maintain her dialogue with Mr. Trump to “impart onto him why it is important that there is a regime change” and that elections should be held in the coming weeks.
But Mr. Mast said that “in reality, you’re probably talking months” before Venezuelans could go to the polls to elect their next leader.
Megan Mineiro is a Times congressional reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
The post House Foreign Affairs Members Call for Machado to Govern Venezuela appeared first on New York Times.
