President Donald Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday he is planning to meet Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado in Washington next week.
“Well, I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her,” Trump said.
Hannity pointed out to President Trump that Machado told him this week that she wants to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Trump for liberating Venezuela. Trump said that he has heard about that and that it would be a “great honor.”
Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s only mainstream center-right party Vente Venezuela, was awarded with the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts towards restoring democracy in Venezuela. Now-deposed dictator Nicolás Maduro had her banned from running in the July 28, 2024 election.
Machado’s efforts saw the deployment of numerous ground teams on the day of the election that successfully collected voter tallies that can demonstrate Maduro lost the election against Edmundo González, an elderly former diplomat, and the only opposition candidate that Maduro allowed to be on the ballot.
The Venezuelan opposition leader spent over a year in hiding at an undisclosed location in Venezuela after the Venezuelan socialist regime accused her and González of “treason.” González fled to Spain in September 2024.
Machado successfully left Venezuela in December to receive the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. After arriving, she revealed that the Trump administration helped her escape from her country.
She confirmed to Hannity this week that she plans to return to Venezuela “soon.”
“As I’ve always said, Sean, every day I make a decision where I am more useful for our cause. That’s why I stayed in hiding for over 16 months, and that’s why I decided to go out, because I believed that at this moment I’m more useful to our cause, being able to speak out from where I’m at right now. But I’m going to go as soon possible back home,” Machado said.
On Sunday, speaking to NBC’s Kristen Welker, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described Machado as “fantastic” but stressed that “we’re dealing with the immediate reality” of Maduro’s downfall when asked over the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Venezuelan regime, presently led by “acting President” Delcy Rodríguez.
“The immediate reality is that, unfortunately – and sadly – but unfortunately, the vast majority of the opposition is no longer present inside of Venezuela. We have short-term things that have to be addressed right away,” Sec. Rubio said.
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