CBS’s Margaret Brennan scored an exclusive interview of Nobel Peace Prize winner and Venezuelan Vice President-Designate María Corina Machado subsequent to her arrival in Oslo. The interview, however, was a wasted opportunity as Brennan displayed how Trump Derangement Syndrome taints coverage of the potential end of decades of Venezuela’s suffering under a socialist dictatorship most charitably described as evil.The unedited interview, streamed on CBS’s website as well as on YouTube, ran about 21 minutes- just under 17 of which ran on Face the Nation. The broadcast version opens with Brennan whining about Machado’s refusal to discuss details of the operation that extracted her from Venezuela and got her to Oslo:Brennan took two passes at getting Machado to jeopardize her reinsertion into Venezuela, which by necessity will be as intricate, if not more so, than the original extraction operation. The broadcast version only aired the final refusal, omitting the first two questions and first refusal. The most notable exchange on sanctions and seizures of oil tankers had Brennan suggesting that support for these is akin to supporting hurting the “already impoverished Venezuelan people.” Machado had to calmly walk Brennan through why this is not the case, only for Brennan to reask the question.Further along in the interview, Brennan tries to press Machado into disavowing military action by the United States, asking how she could reconcile that with her winning a peace prize. Here, Machado takes Brennan to school:Interestingly and as a sort of last word against Machado, Brennan echoes the Maduro regime’s claims. I’ve watched a lot of interviews of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and don’t remember any of them being bracketed with anything said by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Why do so here?First, it’s Trump derangement. Pressure on Venezuela’s Cartel of the Suns dictatorship as part of a strategic foreign policy shift must be intrinsically bad because it is initiated by Donald Trump. That’s how it is covered, hence the media insistence on pushing the War Crimes Hoax, for example.Second, current Venezuela policy further exposes the failures of the Obama administration, which did nothing as the illegitimate Maduro stole the 2013 presidential and 2015 midterms. The Obama administration, with the media’s assent, did nothing as Maduro brutally repressed protesters: running some over with light tanks, and throwing others into dungeons where they would never be seen again. All of this, in the interest of Obama traveling to Cuba and offering his limp wrist to dictator Raul Castro- an awful “deal” that the media hailed as transformative diplomacy. Now that you have an actual freedom fighter trying to throw off a brutal dictatorship that is co-occupied by Russia, China, Iran and needs American help to do so? The American is Donald Trump, so that’s (D)ifferent.Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned interview as uploaded to YouTube on Sunday, December 14th, 2025:
MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to María Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader who joins us from Norway where she just received the Nobel Peace Prize. Welcome to ‘Face the Nation.’
MARÍA CORINA MACHADO: Thank you very much, Margaret. It’s my pleasure.
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