I’d say the answer can be found in the full text of what Machado said after the meeting. This has some historical heft that is missing from the CBS report above: “I presented the president of the United States the medal … the Nobel Peace Prize, and I told him, ‘Listen to this, 200 years ago, General Lafayette gave Simón Bolívar a medal with George Washington’s face on it’ as a symbol of the partnership between the people of the U.S. and the people of Venezuela and their shared fight for freedom against tyranny. And 200 years in history, the people of Bolívar are giving back to the heir of Washington a medal—in this case, the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize—as a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom / to our freedom.”
The signature policy of the Biden administration, and the one that was most opposed by the American public, was Biden’s disastrous opening of our southern border to countless millions of unvetted illegal aliens, including dangerous criminals, many of whom were transported and housed at extravagant expense using taxpayer funds. Biden abandoned border security, relocated Third World refugees en masse, and generally surrendered our national sovereignty. A nation without secure borders is not a nation. Biden’s reckless immigration policies took the nation to the brink of doom.
Americans were furious, especially since President Trump had managed to lock down our borders in his first term. Biden and his inept VP, Kamala Harris, claimed that border enforcement would be impossible without passing an amnesty bill. This was a lie, and Americans knew it. So, President Trump was elected to a second term in 2024 based in large part on his vow to stop illegal immigrationand deport the millions of illegal aliens. Upon returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump 2.0 quickly shut down the flood of illegal immigration through tough border enforcement. Not a single illegal alien managed to cross the border, in contrast to the hordes welcomed by Biden-Harris. Americans were jubilant.