Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez is expected to visit the White House in Washington, D.C. “soon”, according to a White House official. A future meeting has been remarked upon by the U.S. president, who has referred to Rodríguez, Maduro’s successor, as a “terrific person” amid ongoing negotiations to pave the way for a democratic transition in Caracas.
President Trump initially had harsh words for the interim leader shortly after the U.S. operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Rodríguez, who demanded the U.S. return Maduro to Venezuela following his apprehension, has since demonstrated an amicable willingness to cooperate on a U.S.-Venezuela partnership post-Maduro.
Trump has previously stated that she [Rodríguez] “will do whatever” the U.S. needed, adding, “She really doesn't have a choice.” President Trump has also previously warned that if Rodríguez “does not do the right thing, she will be worse off than Maduro.”
The Trump administration has expressed a reluctance to facilitate an arbitrary installation of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who met with Trump last week, and her co-leader Edmundo González, and the “legitimate” president of Venezuela, due to the pair’s lack of support from Venezuela’s institutional sectors.
The White House argues that once in power, Gonzalez and Machado would have their executive powers stripped from them by party hardliners and loyalists to the Maduro regime, who retain tremendous influence over the various levers of government in Caracas, most notably, the Venezuelan armed forces.
Critics of the administration in Washington say that such reluctance for regime change is a betrayal of the democratic movement in Venezuela, arguing: What good is change at the top if it does not affect a purely democratic transition in governance in Venezuela?
Foreign policy heads in the administration, like State Secretary Marco Rubio, quip that such a move at this particular moment would not favor a democratic transition in Caracas, but would undermine it, thereby rendering any transition to representative governance in Venezuela premature.
On Wednesday, Interim President Rodríguez met with CIA Director John Ratcliffe to discuss further cooperation between the two governments and ways of enhancing public security measures against criminal drug organizations, like TDA, in the region, including ways of ensuring economic stability in Venezuela.
Although no official date has been established for a Rodríguez visit to the White House, such a meeting, if it were to take place, would be the first time a de facto President of Venezuela did so since President Luis Herrera Campins’ state visit in November 1981.
