Trump set to meet Venezuelan opposition leader after cozying up to Maduro’s successor

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is set to meet Thurs­day at the White House with Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader María Co­ri­na Macha­do, whose po­lit­i­cal par­ty is wide­ly con­sid­ered to have won 2024 elec­tions re­ject­ed by then-Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, be­fore the Unit­ed States cap­tured him in an au­da­cious mil­i­tary raid this month.

Less than two weeks af­ter U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife at a heav­i­ly guard­ed com­pound in Cara­cas and brought them to New York to stand tri­al on drug traf­fick­ing charges, Trump will host the No­bel Peace Prize lau­re­ate Macha­do, hav­ing al­ready dis­missed her cred­i­bil­i­ty to run Venezuela and raised doubts about his stat­ed com­mit­ment to back­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rule in the coun­try.

“She’s a very nice woman,” Trump told Reuters in an in­ter­view about Macha­do. “I’ve seen her on tele­vi­sion. I think we’re just go­ing to talk ba­sics.”

The meet­ing comes as Trump and his top ad­vis­ers have sig­nalled their will­ing­ness to work with act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, who was Maduro’s vice pres­i­dent and along with oth­ers in the de­posed leader’s in­ner cir­cle re­main in charge of day-to-day gov­ern­men­tal op­er­a­tions.

Ro­dríguez her­self has adopt­ed a less stri­dent po­si­tion to­ward Trump and his “Amer­i­ca First” poli­cies to­ward the West­ern Hemi­sphere, say­ing she plans to con­tin­ue re­leas­ing pris­on­ers de­tained un­der Maduro — a move re­port­ed­ly made at the be­hest of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. Venezuela re­leased sev­er­al Amer­i­cans this week.

Trump, a Re­pub­li­can, said Wednes­day that he had a “great con­ver­sa­tion” with Ro­dríguez, their first since Maduro was oust­ed.

“We had a call, a long call. We dis­cussed a lot of things,” Trump told re­porters. “And I think we’re get­ting along very well with Venezuela.”

In en­dors­ing Ro­dríguez, Trump has side­lined Macha­do, who has long been a face of re­sis­tance in Venezuela. She had sought to cul­ti­vate re­la­tion­ships with Trump and key ad­vis­ers like Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio among the Amer­i­can right wing in a po­lit­i­cal gam­ble to al­ly her­self with the U.S. gov­ern­ment. She al­so in­tends to have a meet­ing in the Sen­ate on Thurs­day af­ter­noon.

De­spite her al­liance with Re­pub­li­cans, Trump was quick to snub her fol­low­ing Maduro’s cap­ture. Just hours af­ter­ward, Trump said of Macha­do that “it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the sup­port with­in or the re­spect with­in the coun­try. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the re­spect.”

Macha­do has steered a care­ful course to avoid of­fend­ing Trump, no­tably af­ter win­ning last year’s No­bel Peace Prize, which Trump cov­et­ed. She has since thanked Trump and of­fered to share the prize with him, a move that has been re­ject­ed by the No­bel In­sti­tute.

Macha­do’s where­abouts have been large­ly un­known since she went in­to hid­ing ear­ly last year af­ter be­ing briefly de­tained in Cara­cas. She briefly reap­peared in Oslo, Nor­way, in De­cem­ber af­ter her daugh­ter re­ceived the No­bel Peace Prize on her be­half.

The in­dus­tri­al en­gi­neer and daugh­ter of a steel mag­nate be­gan chal­leng­ing the rul­ing par­ty in 2004, when the non­govern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tion she co-found­ed, Sú­mate, pro­mot­ed a ref­er­en­dum to re­call then-Pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez. The ini­tia­tive failed, and Macha­do and oth­er Sú­mate ex­ec­u­tives were charged with con­spir­a­cy.

A year lat­er, she drew the anger of Chávez and his al­lies again for trav­el­ing to Wash­ing­ton to meet Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. A pho­to show­ing her shak­ing hands with Bush in the Oval Of­fice lives in the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry. Chávez con­sid­ered Bush an ad­ver­sary.

Al­most two decades lat­er, she mar­shaled mil­lions of Venezue­lans to re­ject Chávez’s suc­ces­sor, Maduro, for an­oth­er term in the 2024 elec­tion. But rul­ing par­ty-loy­al elec­toral au­thor­i­ties de­clared him the win­ner de­spite am­ple cred­i­ble ev­i­dence to the con­trary. En­su­ing an­ti-gov­ern­ment protests end­ed in a bru­tal crack­down by state se­cu­ri­ty forces. —CARA­CAS, Venezuela (AP)

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Sto­ry by REGI­NA GAR­CIA CANO and MEGAN JANET­SKY | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Megan Janet­sky re­port­ed from Mex­i­co City. AP Diplo­mat­ic Writer Matthew Lee in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.