Twelve days after the U.S. military operation that captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and just days after U.S. President Donald Trump dashed the hopes of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, the two are scheduled to meet at the White House this Thursday.
The meeting between Trump and Machado comes just hours after the U.S. president told reporters that Chavista leader and interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, was a “terrific person.” “She’s somebody that we’ve worked with very well,” said Trump. Following Maduro’s arrest, the former vice president took charge of Venezuela with the blessing of the White House.
In the hours following the surprise attack that ended with Maduro and his wife, Cecilia Flores, sitting in the dock of a federal court in New York accused of crimes of “narco-terrorism,” conspiracy and trafficking in cocaine and weapons, Trump made it clear that he does not consider Machado to be the right person to lead a transition in Venezuela — a transition in which Trump himself has reserved a central role.
And that’s the big question surrounding Machado’s visit, which is scheduled to include a working lunch at the White House (Washington time) and an afternoon visit to the Capitol. Will Machado be able to assert the opposition’s role in Washington’s plans to help steer the South American country and take charge of its oil?
Since Maduro’s fall, Machado has tried to put on a brave face about Trump’s rebuffs and has worked to make this Thursday’s meeting happen, on which much is at stake: she needs to convince the U.S. president that it is not a good idea to allow Rodríguez, her great enemy, to remain in power. For months, Machado advocated for a military intervention that finally came on January 3 — only to be disappointed that the U.S. had not relied on her as much as she had expected.
Machado has even shown herself willing to share the Nobel Peace Prize she received in Oslo last December with Trump. The U.S. president is obsessed with the idea that he deserves that award, believing he has ended “eight or nine wars,” although that belief is another indication of his fraught relationship with the truth. Whether Machado will bestow that prize on Trump — who rarely even calls her by name when speaking about the Venezuelan opposition leader — remains another big question of the visit.
Trump has said he expects Machado to offer him her award. He also said that he plans to accept it, even though the Nobel Committee has already warned both of them that it is not transferable.
Trump’s decision to sideline Machado gives the impression that the White House has chosen to turn the page on the results of Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, which international reports say was broadly won by Edmundo González Urrutia, Machado’s candidate (she was unable to run because she was disqualified). Maduro refused to acknowledge that defeat.
At this point, it’s unclear whether the United States plans to call new elections in Venezuela, or when or how that might take place. All of these questions will certainly be on the table this Thursday at the White House.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
