Venezuela’s Machado says she presented her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump during their meeting

Venezue­lan op­po­si­tion leader María Co­ri­na Macha­do said she pre­sent­ed her No­bel Peace Prize medal to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Thurs­day, “as a recog­ni­tion for his unique com­mit­ment with our free­dom.”

Macha­do de­tailed hav­ing giv­en her prize to Trump in com­ments to a group of re­porters af­ter the meet­ing but did not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails. The White House did not im­me­di­ate­ly say if Trump ac­cept­ed the medal.

That fol­lowed her hav­ing met with Trump to dis­cuss her coun­try’s fu­ture, even though he has dis­missed her cred­i­bil­i­ty to take over af­ter an au­da­cious U.S. mil­i­tary raid that cap­tured then-Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Vis­it­ing Trump pre­sent­ed some­thing of a phys­i­cal risk for Macha­do, whose where­abouts have been large­ly un­known since she left her coun­try last year af­ter be­ing briefly de­tained in Cara­cas. Nev­er­the­less, af­ter a closed-door dis­cus­sion with Trump, she greet­ed dozens of cheer­ing sup­port­ers wait­ing for her near the gates—stop­ping to hug many.

“We can count on Pres­i­dent Trump,” she told them, prompt­ing some to briefly chant “Thank you, Trump,” but she didn’t elab­o­rate.

The ju­bi­lant scene stood in con­trast to Trump hav­ing re­peat­ed­ly raised doubts about Macha­do and his stat­ed com­mit­ment to back­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rule in Venezuela. He has sig­nalled his will­ing­ness to work with act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez, who was Maduro’s No. 2.

Along with oth­ers in the de­posed leader’s in­ner cir­cle, Ro­dríguez re­mains in charge of day-to-day gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions and was de­liv­er­ing her first state of the union speech dur­ing Macha­do’s Wash­ing­ton trip.

In en­dors­ing Ro­dríguez so far, Trump side­lined Macha­do, who has long been a face of re­sis­tance in Venezuela. That’s de­spite Macha­do seek­ing to cul­ti­vate re­la­tion­ships with the pres­i­dent and key ad­min­is­tra­tion voic­es like Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, in a gam­ble to al­ly her­self with the U.S. gov­ern­ment and some of its top con­ser­v­a­tives.

White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt called Macha­do “a re­mark­able and brave voice” for the peo­ple of Venezuela but al­so said that the meet­ing didn’t mean Trump’s opin­ion of her changed, call­ing it “a re­al­is­tic as­sess­ment.”

Trump has said it would be dif­fi­cult for Macha­do to lead be­cause she “doesn’t have the sup­port with­in or the re­spect with­in the coun­try.”

Her par­ty is wide­ly be­lieved to have won 2024 elec­tions re­ject­ed by Maduro.

Leav­itt went on to say that Trump sup­port­ed new Venezue­lan elec­tions “when the time is right” but did not say when he thought that might be.

Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion plays down meet­ing ex­pec­ta­tions

Leav­itt said Macha­do sought the face-to-face meet­ing with­out set­ting ex­pec­ta­tions for what would oc­cur. Macha­do pre­vi­ous­ly of­fered to share with Trump the No­bel Peace Prize she won last year, an ho­n­our he has cov­et­ed.

“I don’t think he needs to hear any­thing from Ms. Macha­do,” the press sec­re­tary said, oth­er than to have a ”frank and pos­i­tive dis­cus­sion about what’s tak­ing place in Venezuela.”

All told, Macha­do spent about two and a half hours at the White House but left with­out an­swer­ing ques­tions on whether she’d of­fered to give her No­bel prize to Trump, say­ing on­ly “gra­cias.” It wasn’t clear she’d heard the ques­tion as she hugged and her wait­ing sup­port­ers.

Macha­do al­so went to Capi­tol Hill, for a meet­ing in the Sen­ate. She said she gave Trump the medal in com­ments af­ter her time with the sen­a­tors.

Her Wash­ing­ton stop be­gan af­ter U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea seized an­oth­er sanc­tioned oil tanker that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion says had ties to Venezuela.

It is part of a broad­er U.S. ef­fort to take con­trol of the South Amer­i­can coun­try’s oil af­ter U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife at a heav­i­ly guard­ed com­pound in the Venezue­lan cap­i­tal of Cara­cas and brought them to New York to stand tri­al on drug traf­fick­ing charges.

Leav­itt said Venezuela’s in­ter­im au­thor­i­ties have been ful­ly co­op­er­at­ing with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and that Ro­dríguez’s gov­ern­ment said it planned to re­lease more pris­on­ers de­tained un­der Maduro. Among those re­leased were five Amer­i­cans this week.

Ro­dríguez has adopt­ed a less stri­dent po­si­tion to­ward Trump then she did im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Maduro’s ouster, sug­gest­ing that she can make the Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion’s “Amer­i­ca First” poli­cies to­ward the West­ern Hemi­sphere, work for Venezuela — at least for now.

Trump 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 said dur­ing an Oval Of­fice bill sign­ing. “And I think we’re get­ting along very well with Venezuela.”

Macha­do doesn’t get the nod from Trump

Even be­fore in­di­cat­ing the will­ing­ness to work with Venezuela’s in­ter­im gov­ern­ment, Trump was quick to snub Macha­do. Just hours af­ter Maduro’s cap­ture, Trump said of Macha­do that “it would be very tough for her to be the leader.”

Macha­do has steered a care­ful course to avoid of­fend­ing Trump, no­tably af­ter win­ning the peace prize. She has since thanked Trump, though her of­fer to share the hon­or with him was re­ject­ed by the No­bel In­sti­tute.

Macha­do re­mained in hid­ing even af­ter win­ning the No­bel Peace Prize. She missed the cer­e­mo­ny but briefly reap­peared in Oslo, Nor­way, in De­cem­ber af­ter her daugh­ter re­ceived the award on her be­half.

The in­dus­tri­al en­gi­neer and daugh­ter of a steel mag­nate, Macha­do 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 mar­shalled 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. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by REGI­NA GAR­CIA CANO, MEGAN JANET­SKY and WILL WEIS­SERT | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Regi­na Gar­cia Cano re­port­ed from Cara­cas, Venezuela, and Megan Janet­sky re­port­ed from Mex­i­co City. AP Diplo­mat­ic Writer Matthew Lee in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.