The Trump administration has made a “major mistake” by not working with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado after capturing President Nicolás Maduro, a former US national security adviser told CNN.
John Bolton said Washington’s threw Machado “under the bus.”
“The Venezuelan people, who voted overwhelmingly for the surrogate candidate that was put in for Machado (Edmundo González Urrutia), are wondering: ‘Does the United States not trust or not trust the opposition?’,” he said In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
Working with the remnants of the Maduro regime, rather than using the opposition to try and take over the government, is “a major turning point and a major mistake,” he said.
“Why are we apparently prepared to engage with somebody we’ve sanctioned before to give an illegitimate regime legitimacy?” he asked, referring to acting President Delcy Rodríguez.
Responding to the Trump administration’s claims that installing Machado as president would be chaotic, as she doesn’t have enough support, Bolton said that the US should have been working with the opposition before its attack on Venezuela.
“They didn’t have to tell them the raid was coming, but they should have been working with the opposition as the Trump administration did in 2018 and 2019, with Juan Guaido, to try and fragment Maduro’s regime, to try and find people inside who would be prepared to defect to the opposition, including military leaders, so that people could have been granted amnesty,” Bolton said.
More about Bolton: Following his term as national security adviser between 2018 and 2019, Bolton has become a prominent critic of Trump. He is currently facing a raft of charges over the transmission and retention of defense information.