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Donald Trump will host María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel peace prize winner, at the White House on Thursday for a high-stakes talks on the oil-rich nation’s future following the US capture of Nicolás Maduro.
Many in Venezuela and abroad had expected Machado to take charge after an elite US military team seized Maduro in a pre-dawn raid on 3 January and transported him to a New York City jail.
But the White House has largely sidelined Machado, instead recognizing Maduro’s former vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, as Venezuela’s interim leader even as Trump insists the US will “run” the country.
A close Rodríguez ally, Venezuela’s ambassador to the UK Félix Plasencia, was also set to land in Washington on Thursday to meet Trump officials as part of the dramatic rapprochement brought about by Maduro’s downfall. That official visit – the first in years – was reportedly partly designed to pave the way for the reopening of the Venezuelan embassy.
Machado, a 58-year-old former legislator, won a primary to run against Maduro in 2024 but was blocked by the government from running. Her replacement, the retired diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, was recognized by Washington as the legitimate winner of the presidential election after the opposition presented strong evidence that Maduro had lost the race by a wide margin.
Trump has sent mixed signals about Machado’s role in Venezuela’s transition, publicly questioning her domestic standing. On the day of Maduro’s capture, he remarked that Machado was a “nice woman”, but claimed she lacked the “respect” needed to govern Venezuela.
But whether Machado can persuade Trump otherwise may depend less on her vision for Venezuela than the gold medal she was awarded for her work promoting democracy and human rights.
In an interview with Fox News last week, Machado said that she wanted to “share” the award with Trump – an idea rebuffed by the organizers of the Nobel prize, who clarified that the prize was non-transferable. Still, Trump told reporters it would be a “great honor” to accept the prize.
Trump has frequently expressed frustration at being overlooked for the Nobel prize, and it has been reported that Machado’s acceptance of the prize – despite dedicating it in part to Trump – hurt her standing with the administration. “If she had turned it down and said: ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” a source close to the White House told the Washington Post.
Trump has meanwhile forged a working relationship with Rodríguez, the acting president. Last week, Trump announced an agreement with Venezuela’s interim leaders that he said would provide up to 50m barrels of crude oil to the US. He also signed an executive order to “safeguard” Venezuelan oil revenues in US-controlled accounts.
After initially condemning the capture of Maduro – an operation Venezuelan officials say killed at least 100 military personnel and civilians – Rodríguez has pivoted to working closely with the Trump administration to assert control over the country’s government and its oil reserves. In the day’s since Maduro’s seizure and rendition, officials in Venezuela have begun releasing political prisoners, including multiple US citizens, in what Rodríguez described as an “opening up to a new political moment”. NGOs monitoring political detentions say the process has been slow and estimate that that as many as 1,000 remain detained.
Following their first phone call on Wednesday, which Trump touted on Truth Social as a “tremendous” step toward a “spectacular” partnership and Rodríguez described on Twitter/X as a “courteous” discussion on a bilateral agenda, Trump told reporters the interim leader was a “terrific person” with whom the US has “worked very well”.
Since Trump’s election, Machado has repeatedly praised him, calling him a “champion of freedom”. In the interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Machado insisted her movement was prepared to win a free election in Venezuela and thanked Trump for toppling Maduro.
“I do want to say today, on behalf of the Venezuelan people, how grateful we are for his courageous vision, the actions – historical actions – he has taken against this narco-terrorist regime, to start dismantling this structure and bringing Maduro to justice,” she told the network, speaking from an undisclosed location.
In a separate interview with CBS last week, Machado noted that Rodríguez remains sanctioned by the US and argued the acting president is in a “very critical position because nobody trusts her”.
When asked if she should be Venezuela’s next leader, Machado said: “Absolutely, yes.”
“We are ready and willing to serve our people,” she said.
