María Corina Machado fights to avoid being left out of a hypothetical transition in Venezuela

María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump this week, the White House has confirmed. The conversation aims to bridge the void created by the paradoxical estrangement between the two at the height of the Venezuelan crisis, following Nicolás Maduro’s forced removal from power.

Just as the United States finally decided to intervene in the Caribbean nation — something Machado had been urging for months — the main opposition leader suffered an unexpected setback. Following Maduro’s arrest, the White House reassessed its options, and María Corina Machado was not among them. Trump himself announced a negotiated “transition” with the now-acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, and dismissed Machado as the person to lead the country at this time.

“She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country,” he said. “She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.” Trump has thus left out of this announced transition — at least for the moment — the opposition movement with the most support inside and outside Venezuela. And, most importantly, this opposition has been left without any organic or territorial ties to the population at this time. The U.S. Media has also reported on Trump’s apparent anger at not having won the Nobel Peace Prize, which went to Machado instead.

Trump’s decisions, enthusiastically supported by his Secretary of State Marco Rubio — the main proponent of Machado and her team’s interpretation of the Venezuelan crisis — carry real implications beyond mere symbolism: the White House has chosen to turn the page on the 2024 presidential election results, which, according to numerous international reports, gave a resounding victory to Edmundo González Urrutia, Machado’s candidate (she herself was ineligible to run). Rubio even went so far as to say he considered those elections illegitimate.

“I am very surprised by President Trump’s dismissal of Machado,” Kevin Whitaker, a U.S. Diplomat formerly stationed in Venezuela, stated in several media outlets recently. “Her movement was elected by a landslide in 2024. By dismissing her, he has dismissed the entire movement.”

Trump’s slightly dismissive tone toward the Nobel Peace Prize laureate — whom he rarely, if ever, calls by her name — has caused surprise in Venezuelan politics. And in the United States as well.

Several U.S. Officials have told the media that Trump is prioritizing the caution recommended by his intelligence services. While Machado is enormously popular among the population, her leadership lacks the necessary support within the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, which still prop up the regime. Furthermore, there is a considerable network of militants and civilians armed by the regime itself, and spread throughout the country — the infamous colectivos — that could threaten any aspiration for stability.

Following the U.S. Attack that landed Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in a New York prison, Machado declared herself ready to assume power. The opposition leader has repeatedly stated that the Chavista government is “weak,” that its leadership is divided, and that the national crisis is in its final phase, but her moment has yet to arrive. Her appeals to Venezuelan hope are constant. At the end of last year, she posted a video on social media called “Land of Grace,” in which she invited Venezuelans to envision a country free from Chavista rule, reclaiming its democracy, properly managing its resources, and attracting investors from all corners of the globe.

In addition to Washington’s doubts, Machado and the opposition movements face another challenge. Donald Trump makes no secret of his enormous interest in Venezuela’s natural resources, and is making unilateral decisions about the future of a country that is not his own. He talks a lot about oil and very little about a return to democracy. This is how Rubio presents it: stabilization, recovery, and transition. This tone has been poorly received by the opposition’s grassroots.

A significant portion of Venezuelan opposition leaders are displaying an unusual reluctance to speak with the press. Some of them cite their anger at the way some international media outlets are covering the Venezuelan crisis, presumably for forcing arguments in favor of Chavismo.

Meanwhile, María Corina Machado remains determined to curry favor with Washington, and to that end, she has had to embrace pragmatism, despite the contradictions imposed by reality in the past week. After all, Machado aspires to make Venezuela a strategic ally of the United States in the future. For this reason, she has remained silent regarding Trump’s decisions on the control of oil and natural resources, although she has expressed reservations about the viability of a transition with Delcy Rodríguez. Machado has praised Trump’s strategy against Maduro and Chavismo and has repeatedly thanked him for his actions and his interest in the country. The opposition leader has even offered to share her Nobel Peace Prize with him. The important thing, she and her team insist, is that they are ready to govern Venezuela.

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