Will there be a new dawn in Venezuela?

“What is your goal in Venezuela?” POLITICO reporter Dasha Burns asked U.S. President Donald Trump in an interview last week. “What do you want to see with the actions that you’re taking?”

“Well, one goal is I want the people of Venezuela to be treated well,” the President replied. “I want the people of Venezuela, many of whom live in the United States, to be respected. I mean, they were tremendous to me. They voted for me 94 percent or something. I mean, it’s incredible. I own a big, uh, project, Doral. It’s a great place, Doral Country Club.”

“Been there,” interjected Burns.

“Yeah,” Trump said. “And it’s a, you know, very large, uh, place, beautiful place, right in the middle of they call it Little Venezuela. And I got to know the Venezuelan people very well because, uh, that I’ve owned it for a long time. And they’re unbelievable people. The area is such a successful area. Everybody is successful. It’s amazing. They say if a house is for sale for more than three days, there’s something wrong. I mean, a house … if somebody wants to sell their house, they sell it in just a matter of moments. People love the area. And I got to know the people well. They’re incredible people. And they were treated horribly by Maduro.”

There are plenty of signs that President Trump has been turning more attention toward Venezuela lately.

“The Day After: Trump Advisors and Venezuela Opposition Leaders Plan for Maduro’s Departure,” Brian Bennett reported for Time Magazine on December 11, 2025. 

“In the 1980s, the U.S. negotiated the exile of world leaders like Haiti’s Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier to France and Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines to Hawaii,” recalled Bennett. “Now, President Donald Trump wants Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro out of power. Maduro’s “days are numbered,” Trump told Politico in an interview released on Dec. 9. His Administration considers Maduro the head of a government-sponsored cocaine smuggling syndicate. Since September, he’s blown up 22 alleged drug boats off Venezuela’s coastline, parked a carrier strike group in the Caribbean, and flown F/A-18 attack jets near Venezuela’s border. On Wednesday, the U.S. seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s border.”

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, currently in exile after barely escaping Venezuela with her life, accepted a Nobel Peace Prize in absentia last week.

In the acceptance speech she was unable to deliver in person, Machado described Venezuela’s march into corruption, socialism, and poverty under Maduro. 

“Obscene corruption; historic looting,” Machado described. “During the regime’s rule, Venezuela received more oil revenue than in the previous century combined. And it was all stolen. Oil money became a tool to purchase loyalty abroad while at home criminal and international terrorist groups fused themselves to the state.”

“The economy collapsed by more than 80 percent,” recalled Machado. “Poverty surpassed 86 percent. Nine million Venezuelans were forced to flee. These are not statistics; they are open wounds.”

“Meanwhile, something deeper and more corrosive took place,” she wrote. “It was a deliberate method: to divide society by ideology, by race, by origin, by ways of life; pushing Venezuelans to distrust one another, to silence one another, to see enemies in one another. They smothered us, they took us prisoners, they killed us, they forced us into exile.”

“It had been almost three decades of fighting against a brutal dictatorship,” she added. “And we had tried everything: dialogues betrayed; protests of millions, crushed; elections perverted. Hope collapsed entirely, and belief in any kind of future became impossible. The idea of change seemed either naive or crazy. Impossible.”

“Yet, from the very depths of that despair, a step that seemed modest, almost procedural, unleashed a force that changed the course of our history,” Machado hoped.

Like most Venezuelans, Machado can trace the nation’s fall from prosperity and grace. But what has changed for the worse can be changed for the better. Nations can be broken by bad policy. They can be healed by good policies.

There is hope for the dawning of a new day in Venezuela. Perhaps under President Maria Corina Machado — who is likely to have a friend in U.S. President Donald Trump.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)