President Donald Trump was meeting Thursday with Venezuela’s most prominent opposition figure, María Corina Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was her nation’s democratic leader-in-waiting until Trump’s decision earlier this month first to topple Venezuela’s longtime leader, Nicolás Maduro, and then to back Maduro’s deputy.
Machado’s effort to meet Trump was an attempt to regain influence in the discussion around the future of her country as a U.S. military threat continues to hang over the new leadership in Caracas following the president’s demands to open Venezuela’s oil fields to U.S. companies. Ahead of the meeting, the opposition leader said she planned to hand the Nobel Peace Prize that she won last year to Trump — an extraordinary bid to win his sympathies that has sparked sharp reaction from the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Since the Jan. 3 raid that captured Maduro and brought him to a New York courtroom, Trump has questioned whether Machado has the clout to parachute into a leadership role in her country. Instead, he has thrown his weight behind Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president but has indicated she is willing to put a U.S.-friendly spin on her leadership while keeping the existing regime in place. Rodríguez and Trump spoke by telephone on Wednesday in what is their first known direct conversation, and both spoke positively about the encounter — a head-spinning turn of events given each side’s furious past rhetoric toward the other’s government.
“We just had a great conversation today, and she’s a terrific person,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Trump was “expecting it to be a good and positive discussion,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said as the meeting was beginning, calling Machado “a remarkable and brave voice for many of the people of Venezuela.” But she downplayed the significance of the meeting, saying Trump’s opinion that she doesn’t have the clout to lead the country “has not changed.”
“I don’t think he needs to hear anything from Miss Machado,” Leavitt said, when asked what the president hoped she would say.
Trump is pleased with the job Rodríguez is doing so far, she added.
“We obviously had a $500 million energy deal that was struck in large part because of the cooperation from Ms. Rodríguez,” Leavitt said, and noted the release of five American political prisoners. “So, the president likes what he’s seeing, and we’ll expect that cooperation to continue.”
The president, Leavitt said, remains committed to a transition to a democratic government in Venezuela, and “to hopefully seeing elections in Venezuela one day.” She said there is not yet a timeline for when the United States would like to see elections occur.
Thursday’s meeting is Machado’s bid to reclaim influence with Trump and encourage him to press onward with a democratic transition in her country. She met earlier this week with Pope Leo XIV in the Vatican, who has also expressed deep interest in the situation in Venezuela.
Machado told Fox News’s Sean Hannity last week that she planned to thank Trump for Maduro’s capture and to offer a share of her Nobel prize. When she was announced as the Nobel Peace Prize recipient in October, Machado dedicated the award to Trump for “his decisive support of our cause” — seemingly mindful of the potential diplomatic pitfall of being awarded a prize that the U.S. president has publicly coveted.
The Venezuelan people “certainly want to give it to him and share it with him,” she told Fox last week. Trump told Fox it would be “a great honor” should she opt to give him the prize.
“What he has done is historic,” she said. “It’s a huge step towards a democratic transition.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said, in reaction, that handing off one of its awards isn’t allowed.
Machado, a longtime critic of the country’s authoritarian leadership, rose to international prominence after leading the opposition’s 2024 election campaign and the effort to substantiate its victory.
A former lawmaker, Machado spent years on the margins of a fractured opposition movement that was weakened by arrests, exile and government repression. That changed as Venezuela approached presidential elections in 2024, when she emerged as the driving force behind a unified opposition campaign.
Although barred by the government from holding public office — a restriction that prevented her from running — Machado won overwhelming support in opposition primaries and threw her backing behind a stand-in candidate, former diplomat Edmundo González. Machado led the campaign effort, rallying support for González across the country and transforming the race into the most serious electoral challenge the government had faced in decades.
In July 2024, Venezuelans voted overwhelmingly in favor of the opposition, according to ballot audits conducted by The Washington Post and independent election monitors. The government, then headed by Maduro, refused to release precinct-level results, but Machado’s team — with the help of thousands of volunteers stationed at polling sites — collected original voting receipts from more than 80 percent of voting machines nationwide. Those documents showed González had won more than two-thirds of the vote.
As the opposition publicized its findings, the government launched a sweeping crackdown. Security forces arrested thousands of protesters, journalists, human rights activists and opposition leaders. Machado went into hiding inside Venezuela, while González fled to Spain in September 2024 after government authorities ordered his arrest.
The campaign and its aftermath earned Machado global recognition. In October, the Norwegian Nobel Committee named her the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, calling her “a brave and committed champion of peace” and praising her for keeping “the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.” Two months later, Machado — who had been under a decade-long government ban on leaving the country — covertly escaped Venezuela with the help of the United States to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in Norway.
Machado’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize appears to have emerged as a point of tension in her relationship with Trump. Two people close to the White House previously told The Post that Trump’s reluctance to boost Machado, despite her efforts to flatter him, stemmed in part from her decision to accept an award the president has openly coveted.
People involved with the Nobel Peace Prize said that the current situation was highly unusual.
“I’ve seen parallels — it’s very, very common, that one says that this prize belongs to, and then normal thing would be ‘all the Venezuelan people,’” said Henrik Syse, a professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo who is a former member of the five-person committee that decides the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
“What makes this different is the way in which Trump has so clearly coveted the prize for himself, and at the same time as someone who clearly is influenced by other people’s rhetoric, they want to say things that pleases him, because one may need his support,” Syse said.
Trump’s public posture toward Machado has shifted over time. Last year, he praised her as a “freedom fighter” and repeatedly recognized González as Venezuela’s president-elect. More recently, however, Trump has questioned Machado’s political standing, saying it would be “very tough” for her to lead Venezuela and claiming she lacked sufficient support inside the country.
In recent weeks, the administration has shown limited interest in positioning either Machado or González as central figures in Venezuela’s transition. Trump has instead emphasized the need to stabilize the country before holding elections and has spoken favorably of Rodríguez, who is serving as acting president following Maduro’s ouster — an approach that has alarmed opposition supporters who view Rodríguez as part of the system they voted to remove.
Machado’s meeting with Trump comes as Venezuela’s transition remains unsettled. Opposition leaders are still scattered in exile, security forces remain powerful, and key questions remain unresolved about who will ultimately shape the country’s political future.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea seized another sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration said has ties to Venezuela, part of a broader effort to take control of the South American country’s oil.
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