US President Donald Trump has met Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez for the first time since American forces captured Nicolas Maduro in January.
The two met on Tuesday during a reception hosted by the US president on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York.
It was also Rodríguez’s first visit to the United States since taking over after Maduro’s removal.
The meeting was brief and held behind closed doors. Trump was joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other senior White House officials.
Rodríguez later described the meeting as “historic” and said Venezuela wanted to pursue dialogue with Washington.
But one prominent Venezuelan figure was nowhere near the talks.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado, once strongly backed by Trump, has been trying to return to Venezuela after months in exile.
Her team says she tried three times in around 24 hours to enter the country by air and sea but failed. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for blocking those attempts.
Machado has also been left out of US-backed transition talks involving Rodríguez’s government and other opposition figures.
Trump, meanwhile, has developed a working relationship with Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president.
The shift has come alongside growing economic ties between Washington and Caracas, particularly over Venezuela’s oil industry.
Maduro remains jailed in New York while awaiting trial on US drug trafficking charges, which he denies.
2026-09-23 23:02:00
