The Scoop
As President Donald Trump’s administration increases pressure on Venezuela, his allies are quietly working behind the scenes to invite opposition leader María Corina Machado to visit the White House, multiple people told Semafor.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is among those working to get a Machado visit, but he told Semafor that he’d be “surprised” if it came together this week after the Venezuelan opposition leader was injured leaving the country to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Still, Scott said he’s trying to make it happen.
“I’d like her to meet the president,” Scott said.
The proposal has not yet reached Trump’s desk and nothing has been finalized. But given the administration’s continued posture towards Venezuela and its authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro, some allies believe Trump would be open to the visit. One person familiar with the situation told Semafor that Machado would like to “present [Trump] with her Nobel medal.”
Machado wants to “formalize the dedication of the prize to show the world that strength is a force for peace,” the person said. “The president is making a lot more friends down in Latin America and María Corina is in the on-deck circle.”
A senior White House official told Semafor that “no such meeting has been scheduled” and Machado’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Such a meeting would prove less controversial than other portions of Trump’s Venezuela policy, like the Pentagon’s two-tap strike on an alleged drug boat in September. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has cosponsored resolutions to rein in military activity in the region, said he is “not in favor of initiating war with Venezuela” and that Trump’s policy is “essentially a war for regime change.” But he said wouldn’t oppose a visit to Washington by Machado.
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In the last few weeks, Trump has continued upping the pressure on Maduro. The Trump administration recently sanctioned Maduro’s nephews and a number of vessels carrying Venezuelan oil after seizing an oil tanker off the coast. On Tuesday, the president ordered “a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers” entering an exiting Venezuela, and labeled the “regime” a “foreign terrorist organization.”
The Trump administration has been careful about not explicitly endorsing regime change in Venezuela — though in a Vanity Fair article published this week (that’s been denounced by the White House), chief of staff Susie Wiles was quoted as saying Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle.”
On Capitol Hill, the president appears to have support for possible regime change if that’s his end goal — though Scott argued it wouldn’t even amount to regime change because Maduro is an illegitimate leader: “Maduro is not the leader of Venezuela. He stole the election. He’s a leader of drug cartels.”
“I don’t know if that’s a publicly-stated policy position, I would certainly not have a problem if that was their position,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said when asked by Semafor on Wednesday. “And I think Maduro is a cancer on that continent and I think that the steps have been taken so far to stop the drug trade and go after the terrorist cartels have been successful.”
