SWEETWATER, Fla. – U.S. Sen. Rick Scott was in Miami-Dade County’s Sweetwater on Friday when he had a public conversation on the phone with María Corina Machado, a lead figure of the Venezuelan opposition.
Scott, who is campaigning for re-election, expressed his support for Machado, a former presidential candidate who remains in Caracas.
Supporters of Nicolas Maduro removed Machado from the National Assembly and disqualified her from running for office. In October, she formally won the Venezuelan primary.
Scott said he wants President Joe Biden to impose tougher sanctions on Venezuela.
“We ought to make sure that there is no ability to do any business with anybody around Maduro ... or anyone around him,” Scott said.
Most recently, Maduro’s administration ordered the arrest of 14 opposition politicians who support Machado over a “transnational conspiracy.”
Maduro has escalated tensions with Guyana alleging ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies, was getting in the way of Venezuela’s claim to the oil-rich Essequibo region of Guayana.
Orlando Gutierrez, a Cuban-American supporter of the Venezuelan opposition and Scott, said he wasn’t surprised about Maduro’s strategy.
“Totalitarian regimes always come up with some kind of aggression, some kind of a plan when they’re facing a lot of domestic opposition, that’s the case of Venezuela,” Gutierrez said.