Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado at Capitol Hill after a meeting with U.S. lawmakers on Thursday.Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado continued her campaign to woo U.S. President Donald Trump by presenting him with the medal from her Nobel Peace Prize at a White House meeting on Thursday, even as his administration heaped praise on her authoritarian socialist opponents in Caracas and said there was no timeline for the country to return to democracy.
Ms. Machado was spotted arriving for the closed-door sit-down around noon and leaving shortly before 2:30 p.m. The leader of the Vente Venezuela party, she won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize after Mr. Trump openly campaigned to receive it himself.
Machado presents Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize.Daniel Torok/The White House/via REUTERS
Since capturing Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, with a military operation earlier this month and whisking him to the U.S. to face drug-trafficking charges, Mr. Trump has left Mr. Maduro’s subordinates in power in the country. He has dismissed any talk of having Ms. Machado take a leadership role in Caracas. “She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country,” he said the day he toppled Mr. Maduro.
Speaking with reporters on Capitol Hill after meeting with legislators on Thursday, Ms. Machado said she gave Mr. Trump the medal from the Nobel earlier in the day. She compared the gesture to an episode in Venezuelan history in which the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who helped the U.S. achieve independence, gave a medal with the face of George Washington to Simón Bolívar, the Latin American independence leader.
“The people of Bolívar are giving back to the heir of Washington a medal, in this case a medal of the Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom,” she said.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said she presented U.S. President Donald Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize medal on Thursday during a White House meeting that could affect how Trump seeks to shape the South American country's political future.
Reuters
The Norwegian Nobel Committee issued a statement saying that the prize cannot be “shared, or transferred to others,” meaning that, despite Ms. Machado giving Mr. Trump the medal, he will not be recognized as its winner.
Ms. Machado did not say whether the President had accepted the gift, but the White House later released a photo of a grinning Mr. Trump holding the medal mounted in a gold frame. He thanked Ms. Machado on social media.
“María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!” he wrote on Truth Social, describing Ms. Machado as “a wonderful woman who has been through so much.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, meanwhile, signalled continued U.S. support for the dictatorial regime of acting Venezuelan president Delcy Rodríguez, Mr. Maduro’s former deputy. Ms. Rodríguez has agreed to turn over up to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S.
“They have been extremely co-operative. They have thus far met all of the demands and requests of the United States and of the President,” Ms. Leavitt told a White House briefing of Ms. Rodríguez and her government. “The President likes what he’s seeing and we’ll expect that co-operation to continue.”
Earlier this week, Mr. Trump described Ms. Rodríguez as “a terrific person” after having a “great conversation” by telephone with her.
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Ms. Leavitt affirmed that Mr. Trump is “committed to hopefully seeing elections in Venezuela one day” but offered no specifics. “I don’t have an updated timetable for you today.”
Asked if Mr. Trump still felt Ms. Machado was not a viable option to lead Venezuela, Ms. Leavitt replied: “His opinion on this matter has not changed.”
Ms. Machado was barred by the Maduro regime from running against him in the 2024 presidential election, but her ally, Edmundo González, is widely believed to have won that race. Mr. Maduro is accused of falsifying the results in order to stay in office.
Since Mr. Maduro’s capture, Vente Venezuela has called for Mr. González to be installed as the country’s president.
Supporters of Venezuela gather outside the White House ahead of the meeting between Trump and Machado in Washington.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
Amid Mr. Trump’s rebuffs, Ms. Machado signalled ahead of time that she would use the Nobel award coveted by the President to win him over. During an interview with Sean Hannity, one of Mr. Trump’s favourite Fox News personalities, she said Venezuelans “certainly want to give it to him and share it with him.”
The offer did not appear to assuage Mr. Trump. “I single-handedly ENDED 8 WARS, and Norway, a NATO Member, foolishly chose not to give me the Noble Peace Prize,” he wrote on Truth Social last week, misspelling the prize’s name and incorrectly attributing the award process to the country of Norway, rather than the Oslo-based committee that makes the selection.
Fernando Marcano, a Vente Venezuela organizer, said Thursday that his party hoped to convince the U.S. government to ensure a transition to democracy.
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“What we’re requesting from the Trump administration is that it keep putting pressure on Delcy Rodríguez’s administration to continue down the right path with regards to normalization, and establish the minimum conditions necessary to move to a transition and then a free election,” Mr. Marcano, the party co-ordinator for the state of Aragua, told The Globe and Mail.
He said the party also wanted to see security guarantees for its people who have been persecuted and arrested, particularly since the 2024 election, and for political prisoners to be freed. Ms. Rodríguez has taken some limited steps on the latter, releasing some prisoners, including U.S. citizens, but hundreds more remain behind bars.
Since Mr. Maduro’s fall, the regime in Caracas has arrested Venezuelans for celebrating his capture and its armed paramilitary groups have been deployed throughout the country.
Mr. Marcano, who himself had to flee into exile last year, held out hope that the White House was playing a long game on Venezuela, which would ultimately end with democracy.
“We believe that the decision to leave Delcy is part of a larger strategy,” he said. “We are certain that Venezuelans will soon have total control over the entire transition process and that we will drive everything necessary at the political level to be able to hold our first free elections and to be able to continue guiding our future in freedom.”