Venezuelan opposition leader makes high-stakes visit to Washington – National

Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado will meet U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, an encounter that has the potential to change the longer term of the oil-rich South American country.

For years, Machado has been the face of Venezuela’s pro-democracy opposition. Her political coalition won Venezuela’s last election in 2024 by a landslide, in keeping with international observers. Machado herself had been barred from running for the presidency, so opposition candidate Edmundo González ran in her stead backed by Machado’s coalition.

Despite independent analyses indicating González received about twice as many votes as President Nicolás Maduro, Maduro refused to concede. Facing arrest, each González and Machado eventually fled the country.

Machado’s meeting on the White House comes lower than three weeks after Maduro was seized by U.S. forces in Caracas. In her first interview following Maduro’s arrest, Machado told Fox News Hannity: “January third will go down in history because the day justice defeated a tyranny. It’s a milestone…it’s not only huge for the Venezuelan people and our future; I feel it’s an enormous step for humanity, for freedom and human dignity.”

“I’m planning to return to Venezuela as soon as possible,” she said.

News of Machado’s impending return was quietly celebrated by odd Venezuelans who spoke to Global News in Cúcuta, a city on the Colombian side of the Venezuelan border where large crowds of Venezuelans arrive every day to buy food and other basic supplies, to be able to circumvent Venezuela’s extraordinarily high prices and inflation.

“Machado is our Iron Lady,” said a smiling Juan Antonio, who was in Cúcuta for a medical appointment (Colombia provides free health care to Venezuelans).

“That is the change that we’ve been waiting for for a very long time. And that lady, well, what she said and what she has done and what has been left to do, gives hope to Venezuela.”

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Trump backs Maduro ally in Venezuela, sidelines opposition leader Machado

“She has the trust of the people. Each time that María Corina Machado goes out to the road, she will reunite the family of Venezuela,” said Juan Carlos Viloria, president of the NGO Global Alliance for Human Rights and a community leader within the Venezuelan diaspora.

Viloria is certainly one of an estimated nearly three million Venezuelans living in Colombia, following a mass exodus fuelled by Venezuela’s economic collapse and Maduro’s crackdown on human rights. “This can be a historic moment, but additionally a particularly fragile one,” Viloria said.

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That fragility is predicted to underpin Machado’s meeting with the U.S. president. At around the identical time Machado meets with Trump, a Venezuelan government envoy can be expected to reach in Washington to satisfy U.S. officials to debate reopening the Venezuelan embassy.

After Trump announced news of Maduro’s arrest on Jan.3, a reporter asked the U.S. president whether he would endorse Machado to guide the country. Trump’s answer surprised many.

“I feel it might be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support inside or the respect throughout the country,” Trump said. “She’s a really nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”

As a substitute, Trump announced his government would temporarily work with Maduro’s former vice-president, now acting Venezuelan president Delcy Rodríguez, a long-time Maduro loyalist and regime member.

The U.S. president was offended over Machado’s decision to just accept last yr’s Nobel Peace Prize, an honour Trump has long coveted, which reportedly factored into Trump’s decision to dismiss Machado. Machado said last week she hoped to thank Trump personally for the U.S. intervention in Venezuela and would love to offer her Nobel Prize to him. Trump called the offer “an amazing honour” and said “it’s very nice that she desires to are available.”

When asked if the gesture would change his view of Machado’s future role in Venezuela, the president replied, “She may be involved in some aspect of it. I could have to talk to her.”

The Nobel Committee responded with a press release that the peace prize, widely considered certainly one of the world’s most prestigious awards, shouldn’t be transferable.

Asked about Trump’s earlier remarks that Machado didn’t have sufficient support to guide the country, José Ernesto Hernández, National Coordinator for the Youth Wing of Machado’s opposition movement, told Global News he was “not ready to query or interpret the words of Donald Trump,” but that “Venezuelans in and overseas are united behind the leadership of María Corina Machado.”

Hernández, who, together with Machado, fled the country and is now living in an undisclosed location, said he was confident the Trump administration will ensure Venezuela holds latest elections. “Today there remains to be repression throughout the country,” Hernández told Global News in an exclusive interview.

“(Elections) appear to be the goal of each the Venezuelans and the Trump administration itself, because that might provide stability and security for the whole hemisphere. A free and fair election, democratizing Venezuela is the safest way for the USA to give you the chance to guard and guarantee its goal of national security.”

Article 233 of Venezuela’s structure requires a presidential election be held inside 30 days of a everlasting emptiness, similar to the one attributable to Maduro’s removal. But Trump has repeatedly refused to set any timeline for elections in Venezuela and has suggested they could possibly be years away, telling the Latest York Times that the country must first be “restored” and that an election “would require time.”

The White House has outlined a 3‑phase plan for Venezuela, which puts political transition and democratic elections on the very end, after oil sector stabilization and an economic “recovery” phase. Hernández acknowledged that “it’s premature to speak about if elections shall be held by a certain time.”

“First, they must take vital steps for the transition to start. And the transition begins, because it should, with recognition of the legitimate opposition leadership,” he said.

Douglas Farah, the president of IBI Consultants based in Washington, D.C., spent a decade advising the Pentagon. He told Global News that he worked with the primary Trump administration in 2019 to run war games to simulate what a post-Maduro Venezuela might appear to be.

“I feel the potential of things taking a turn for the higher are very small,” Farah said. He argued the Trump administration should prioritize democratic transition and humanitarian aid over U.S. plans for oil extraction, to be able to provide stability and stop a mass exodus of refugees.

“I feel it’s clear now that the foremost goal for the Trump administration is oil, not democracy or the restoration of decent living for the Venezuelan people. And I feel that can cause us enormous grief within the near future.”

Farah said much now depends upon Machado’s ability to win over President Trump.

“I feel quite a bit will rely on if she has any U.S. backing or not,” Farah said. “If she is available in (to Venezuela) by herself, they might not arrest her because they might think that’s way too big a step for the U.S. to swallow. But she’s actually not going to give you the chance to mobilize politically without U.S. support.”