Trump is scheduled to meet with Venezuelan opposition leader Machado

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet Thursday at the White House with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, whose political party is widely believed to have won a 2024 election that former President Nicolas Maduro rejected before the U.S. arrested him in a daring military raid this month.

Less than two weeks after US forces arrested Maduro and his wife at a high-security compound in Caracas and brought them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges, Trump will host Nobel Peace Prize laureate Machado, having already denied her credibility for running Venezuela and raised doubts about his stated commitment to supporting democratic rule in the country.

Read more: Trump is sidelining the Venezuelan opposition leader while keeping Maduro’s party in power

“She’s a very nice woman,” Trump told Reuters in an interview about Machado. “I saw her on TV. I think we’ll just talk about the basics.”

The meeting comes as Trump and his senior advisers expressed their willingness to work with Acting President Delcy Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s vice president and remains with others in the ousted leader’s inner circle responsible for day-to-day government operations.

Rodriguez herself has adopted a less harsh stance toward Trump and his “America First” policies toward the Western Hemisphere, saying she plans to continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro — a move said to have been made at the request of the Trump administration. Venezuela released several Americans this week.

Trump, a Republican, said Wednesday that he had a “great conversation” with Rodriguez, their first since Maduro’s ouster.

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

Watch live: The White House press conference may address the Machado meeting and the Insurrection Act threat

By endorsing Rodriguez, Trump marginalized Machado, who had long been the face of the resistance in Venezuela. She has sought to cultivate ties with Trump and key advisers such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio among the American right-wing in a political gamble to ally with the US government. It also plans to hold a meeting in the Senate on Thursday afternoon.

Despite her alliance with Republicans, Trump was quick to ignore her after Maduro’s arrest. Just hours later, Trump said of Machado, “It’s going to be very difficult for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support inside the country or the respect inside the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t get the respect.”

Machado has taken a careful path to avoid offending Trump, especially after winning the Nobel Peace Prize last year, which Trump coveted. She has since thanked Trump and offered to share the award with him, a move rejected by the Nobel Institute.

Machado’s whereabouts remain largely unknown since she went into hiding early last year after being briefly detained in Caracas. She reappeared briefly 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 NGO she co-founded, Sumati, promoted a referendum to remove then-President Hugo Chavez. The initiative failed, and Machado and other Sumati executives were charged with conspiracy.

A year later, she again angered Chavez and his allies when she traveled to Washington to meet with President George W. Bush. A photo showing her shaking hands with Bush in the Oval Office is still fresh in collective memory. Chavez considered Bush an opponent.

Nearly two decades later, it mobilized millions of Venezuelans to reject Maduro, Chavez’s successor, for another term in the 2024 elections. But electoral authorities loyal to the ruling party declared him the winner despite credible evidence to the contrary. The ensuing anti-government protests ended in brutal repression by state security forces.

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