Marco Rubio on Venezuela and Machado

    por Betanews: Marco Rubio

    🇺🇸🇻🇪 Marco Rubio was asked about the obstacles that María Corina Machado faces in returning to Venezuela: "I am not sure what you are referring to. But María Corina is very brave. We love her very much. I have known her for many years and I have been in communication with her. And I do not want to minimize her situation, but there are 8 million Venezuelans who have left the country. Our policy is that we want to reach the point where that community has the confidence to return to Venezuela".

    Transcrição (en)

    Following up on Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado, based on our reporting and some things said by her own team, made three attempts in the last 24 hours to get back to Venezuela, was prevented by authorities of different countries, including Venezuela, from doing so and from returning. Should she be allowed back into Venezuela now? And what is the timeline for the institution building and the reform that you described is necessary to have elections? Yeah, I have to get back. I mean, I'm not I was here yesterday all day, so I'm not sure what you're referring to or talking about. But I mean, on a broader perspective, I told you this earlier. Maria Corina is very brave. We like her very much. I've known her for a long time and and been interacting with her for a very long time. But there and this is in no means like downplaying here. I'm saying there's like eight million Venezuelans that have left that country. And it is our policy that we want to not that we want to kick them out of the United States. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that we would like to see that community be able to return to their country and reopen the businesses that they lost if they want to. And, you know, we're seeing signs that that's happening. Those American airline flights that are going in from Miami are packed every day. And what we're seeing now is one of the points we raised yesterday in our meetings was these Venezuelans who perhaps are once key to their political or economic life are going back to Venezuela. They're kind of scouting out the situation and then they're returning. we'd like to see a point where they feel and have confidence that they can actually go back and rebuild what they lost or rebuild what was taken. On the political front, but also on the economic front. And for that to happen, we need to make more progress on these talks with regards to the transition and reconciliation. So all that is interrelated. On the specifics you just had, I apologize, you just hear all day, we had like, I don't know, 142 meetings yesterday. The president took a bunch of meetings that lasted until 11.