The president of the United States, Donald Trump, will receive Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado on Thursday at the White House, a US administration official confirmed to Efe.
The meeting takes place after Trump announced last week that he planned to address the role of the Nobel Peace Prize winner in the future of Venezuela after the capture of Nicolás Maduro, and in the midst of Washington’s current negotiations with the interim government in Caracas.
“I’m going to have to talk to her. She might be involved in some way. I’ll have to talk to her. I think it’s very nice of you to want to come,” Trump said Friday when asked by the press whether he would change his position regarding Machado if she awarded him her Nobel Prize.
According to reports from The Washington Post, The US president would have decided not to include the opposition leader in his plans for Venezuela after she accepted the prestigious award, openly coveted by him. However, the president denied that this had an influence.
Machado, who had already dedicated the Nobel to Trump when he received it, stated on Monday in an interview on the American network Fox News that wants to share the award with him, to which The Norwegian Nobel Institute explained that a Nobel Prize cannot be transferred to third parties.
Trump is “very honored” by María Corina Machado’s visit
Trump insisted on Friday that He feels “very honored” by the visit of the Venezuelan opponent in statements that slightly contrast with what he himself said when he questioned Machado’s ability to lead Venezuela because “he has no support or respect” in the country.
Asked this Monday in Fox News for the decision not to involve Machado in the government of a post-Maduro Venezuela, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt insisted that “President Trump and his National Security team “They made a realistic assessment of the situation in Venezuela, and that decision turned out to be correct.”
“Until now we have had the full cooperation of the Venezuelan authorities. The president has managed to close a $500 billion energy deal. “31 million barrels of oil are already on their way to the United States to be sold and that money will be deposited in an account controlled by the US government,” he warned.
Leavitt also insisted that the Rodríguez government agreed to release the political prisoners, “something the United States has long wanted to see,” and highlighted the work with Caracas, which Trump “hopes will continue.”
This Monday, Machado asked Pope Leo XIV in the Vatican to intercede for political prisoners and for the “advancement without delay” of the transition to democracy in Venezuela.
