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

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 alter the future 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, according to 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, both González and Machado eventually fled the country.

Machado’s meeting at the White House comes less 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 3rd will go down in history as the day justice defeated a tyranny. It’s a milestone…it’s not only huge for the Venezuelan people and our future; I think it’s a huge step for humanity, for freedom and human dignity.”

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

News of Machado’s impending return was quietly celebrated by ordinary Venezuelans who spoke to Global News in Cúcuta, a city on the Colombian side of the Venezuelan border where large crowds of Venezuelans arrive daily to shop for food and other basic supplies, in order 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).

“This is the change that we’ve been waiting for for a 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.”

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

Viloria is 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 is a historic moment, but also an extremely fragile one,” Viloria said.

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That fragility is expected to underpin Machado’s meeting with the U.S. president. At around the same time Machado meets with Trump, a Venezuelan government envoy is also expected to arrive in Washington to meet U.S. officials to discuss 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 lead the country. Trump’s answer surprised many.

“I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country,” Trump said. “She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”

Instead, 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 angry over Machado’s decision to accept last year’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 like to give her Nobel Prize to him. Trump called the offer “a great honour” and said “it’s very nice that she wants to come in.”

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

The Nobel Committee responded with a statement that the peace prize, widely considered one of the world’s most prestigious awards, is not transferable.

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

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

“(Elections) seem to be the goal of both the Venezuelans and the Trump administration itself, because that would provide stability and security for the entire hemisphere. A free and fair election, democratizing Venezuela is the safest way for the United States to be able to protect and guarantee its goal of national security.”

Article 233 of Venezuela’s constitution requires a presidential election be held within 30 days of a permanent vacancy, such as the one caused by Maduro’s removal. But Trump has repeatedly refused to set any timeline for elections in Venezuela and has suggested they could be years away, telling the New York Times that the country must first be “restored” and that an election “will require time.”

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

“First, they have to take important steps for the transition to begin. And the transition begins, as 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 first Trump administration in 2019 to run war games to simulate what a post-Maduro Venezuela might look like.

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

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

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

“I think a lot will depend on if she has any U.S. backing or not,” Farah said. “If she comes in (to Venezuela) by herself, they may not arrest her because they may think that’s way too big a step for the U.S. to swallow. But she’s certainly not going to be able to mobilize politically without U.S. support.”