Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado will meet next week with US president Donald Trump, who has edged her out of a role in Venezuela's government in favor of allies of arrested former president Nicolas Maduro.
"She's going to come in and pay her regards to our country, really to me, but I'm a representative of the country, nothing else," Trump said during a meeting Friday with US oil executives about a plan for rebuilding Venezuela's oil industry.
Machado will be in Washington, DC, on 13 or 14 January, Trump said. He added that he would also meet with "various representatives of Venezuela", but that those meetings have not all been arranged.
Trump and other US officials have said they will let Delcy Rodriguez remain as Venezuela's interim president after the former vice-president took the oath of office earlier this week. That administration will remain in place for at least 90 days, the US has said.
Trump described his relationship today with the remaining Venezuelan officials as "very good" after US special forces seized Maduro and his wife in a dawn raid on 3 January and ferried them to New York on drug charges.
Machado led a Venezuelan opposition movement that most countries agree won Venezuela's last presidential election in 2025, rather than Maduro. But much of the movement "is no longer present inside of Venezuela", US secretary of state Marco Rubio said in explaining why the rest of Maduro's administration will stay in place.
The US has started deploying a plan to intervene heavily in Venezuela's oil sector and government. Vehicle traffic has visibly increased in recent days at the US embassy site in Caracas, where operations have been suspended since 2019.
A former contractor at the embassy said he has been told the embassy could reopen as early as next week. US diplomatic relations with Venezuela have been handled from Bogota, Colombia, by charge d'affaires John McNamara.
