Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado on Wednesday praised President Donald Trump's escalating pressure campaign against her country's socialist regime as "absolutely correct," hailing Trump's military and diplomatic strategy as the beginning of the end of dictator Nicolás Maduro's rule.

Speaking via video from hiding at the America Business Forum in Miami, Machado called Maduro "the head of a narco-terror structure that has declared war on the Venezuelan people and the democratic nations in the region."

She said Trump's measures — from U.S. military deployments in the Caribbean to expanded sanctions and bounties on Venezuelan leaders — were necessary to "cut off the cash flows" sustaining what she described as a criminal state.

"Maduro started this war, and President Trump is ending that war," Machado told an audience that included Latin American diplomats, U.S. business leaders, and members of Miami's large Venezuelan exile community.

"He is not a legitimate head of state. He leads a network funded by drug trafficking, gold smuggling, arms, and human trafficking. These are enemies of democracy and of our hemisphere."

Her remarks, as reported by multiple outlets, mark her strongest endorsement yet of Trump's regional policy. They also come as the White House continues its largest military buildup in the Caribbean in decades.

U.S. War Department officials told the Miami Herald that more than 4,000 troops, advanced destroyers, and F-35B fighter jets have been positioned off Venezuela's coast as part of a joint task force targeting narcotics and weapons networks tied to the regime.

The operation — which has reportedly sunk multiple smuggling vessels and killed dozens of traffickers — has fueled speculation that Washington may eventually move to weaken or remove the Maduro regime itself.

Trump, asked on CBS' "60 Minutes" if Maduro's "days were numbered," replied, "I think so, yeah."

Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for leading Venezuela's democratic resistance and exposing electoral fraud in last year's disputed vote, said her award was "a recognition of the will of our people — a nation that came together to fight the worst criminal regime around values, dignity, justice, and freedom."

She thanked Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for what she called "moral clarity" in confronting socialist and authoritarian governments in the hemisphere, including in Cuba and Nicaragua.

"This is a universal cause," she said. "Liberating Venezuela will mean that Cuba and Nicaragua will soon be free again."

"For the first time, the Americas could be free of communism, dictatorship, and narco-terrorism."

Machado also warned that foreign adversaries had turned Venezuela into "the main bridgehead of the enemies of the United States," citing the presence of Iran, Russia, and China in the country's intelligence and financial systems.

"These actors are operating just three hours from Florida," she said. "A democratic transition will dismantle these networks and make Venezuela the strongest ally of the United States in the Americas."

For conservative audiences, Machado's praise underscored Trump's enduring influence abroad and his willingness to project American power against socialist strongholds.

"History will always remember what you have done as a community, as a nation, for freedom and justice around the world," she told Miami's Venezuelan diaspora.

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