Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she presented President Donald Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize medal during their meeting at the White House on Thursday, despite Trump’s public doubts about her credibility to lead Venezuela after the U.S. ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro.
Machado told reporters after leaving the White House and heading to Capitol Hill that she presented the medal “as a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom.” The Associated Press reported that Trump later confirmed on social media that Machado had left the medal for him to keep, and that he called it an honor to meet her.
In his post, Trump said: “María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done,” adding, “Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!” The White House later posted a photo of Machado standing next to Trump in the Oval Office as he holds the medal in a large frame. Text in the frame said the medal was “Presented as a personal symbol of gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan people in recognition of President Trump’s principled and decisive action to secure a free Venezuela.”
The Nobel Institute has said Machado could not give her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump, an honor that Trump has previously coveted, according to the AP report. Machado did not provide more detail on what was discussed during their meeting, the report said, and it said she indicated she had provided few specifics about elections to Trump.
After the closed-door meeting, Machado met supporters waiting near the White House gates, stopping to hug many of them. She told the crowd, “We can count on President Trump,” without elaborating, and some briefly chanted, “Thank you, Trump,” the AP reported.
Before her trip to Washington, Machado had not appeared in public since she traveled last month to Norway, where her daughter received the peace prize on her behalf. The AP report said Machado had spent 11 months in hiding in Venezuela before appearing in Norway after the ceremony.
The AP report described the moment as contrasting with political realities in Venezuela, where Rodríguez remained in charge of day-to-day government operations and others in Maduro’s inner circle continued to hold roles. In her first state of the union speech Thursday, the interim president promoted the resumption of diplomatic ties between the historic adversaries and advocated for opening Venezuela’s state-run oil industry to more foreign investment, the report said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Machado was “a remarkable and brave voice,” but she also told reporters that the meeting did not change Trump’s view of Machado. Leavitt said it was “a realistic assessment,” and she added that Trump supported new Venezuelan elections “when the time is right,” while not providing a timeline, according to the AP report. Leavitt said Machado sought a face-to-face meeting without setting expectations and that Machado spent about two and a half hours at the White House.
After leaving the White House, Machado met with a bipartisan group of senators. Sen. Chris Murphy said Machado told them that “if there’s not some progress, real progress towards a transition in power, and/or elections in the next several months, we should all be worried.” Murphy said she reminded the senators that Delcy Rodríguez is, in many ways, worse than Maduro, and he said he did not think Machado received any commitment from the White House on holding elections.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, said after the meeting that Machado “delivered a message that loud and clear: What President Trump did was the most important, significant event in Latin America. That getting rid of Maduro was absolutely essential.”
The AP report also linked Machado’s Washington visit to parallel U.S. actions involving Venezuela’s oil, saying U.S. forces in the Caribbean Sea seized another sanctioned oil tanker with ties to Venezuela. The report said it was part of broader U.S. efforts to take control of Venezuela’s oil after U.S. forces captured Maduro and his wife less than two weeks earlier at a heavily guarded compound in Caracas and brought them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges.
The AP report said Leavitt described Venezuela’s interim authorities as fully cooperating with the Trump administration and said Rodríguez’s government planned to release more prisoners detained under Maduro, including five Americans released that week.
Machado’s path to the Nobel ceremony and to this meeting has been shaped by years of political confrontation, the AP report said. It said she began challenging the ruling party in 2004 after co-founding Súmate and promoting a referendum to recall then-President Hugo Chávez; the initiative failed, and Machado and other Súmate executives were charged with conspiracy. The AP report said she later faced additional backlash after traveling to Washington to meet President George W. Bush, and that she later helped marshal opposition to Nicolás Maduro, with protests that the report said were followed by a brutal crackdown.