Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has embraced a “historic” meeting with Donald Trump in New York, posing for a carefully staged photograph with the US president less than nine months after he ordered the abduction of her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro.
The encounter, held at the Lotte New York Palace hotel near Trump Tower on Tuesday evening, placed Rodríguez at the centre of a diplomatic pivot that could reshape Venezuela’s place in the world. Maduro remains imprisoned in Brooklyn, roughly seven miles from the Manhattan hotel where the meeting took place.
For Rodríguez, the image offered something more valuable than ceremony: recognition. Washington’s willingness to meet her, and to discuss Venezuela’s recovery with her, could help consolidate her authority after years in which the country was isolated under Maduro’s dictatorship.
A meeting framed as a new beginning
On the eve of the encounter, an American reporter asked Rodríguez whether she intended to visit Maduro during her time in New York. She did not answer. Instead, she met Trump in a hotel ballroom with senior American officials present, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller.
In a 133-word statement posted on Instagram, Rodríguez described the talks as “a historic meeting with … Donald Trump”. She said the two sides had discussed strengthening bilateral relations and advancing cooperation in energy, mining, security and other areas of shared interest. The statement made no reference to Maduro, her former boss and closest political ally.
Oliver Blanco, one of Rodríguez’s leading diplomats, offered an even warmer assessment. He described the meeting as “a new stage of dialogue and understanding between both countries” and “an important step toward new opportunities for our country and our people”. Blanco also published a smiling photograph in which he and Trump gave the thumbs-up.
Rubio was more measured. “It was a short meeting but it was an important meeting,” he told reporters on Wednesday, saying the discussion centred on Venezuela’s economic recovery and political transition.
Hours earlier, Rodríguez had watched from the general assembly hall as Trump celebrated the “massive military operation” that led to Maduro’s capture during a special forces raid on Caracas in January. Trump had called Maduro an “outlaw dictator” and “a real criminal”, while describing the operation and the subsequent oil arrangement in language that suggested conquest rather than diplomacy.
“It was a war … [and] to the victor belong the spoils,” Trump said of the recent oil deal between the two countries, which he called “the largest oil deal in history”. Rodríguez appeared to wince as he spoke. In the photograph taken later, some observers noticed that her left hand seemed clenched.
Legitimacy bought at a political price
For many of Rodríguez’s critics in Venezuela, the meeting represented an unmistakable humiliation. A socialist politician who spent years denouncing American imperialism had been forced to seek Washington’s approval after Maduro’s removal. One opposition figure called the encounter a meeting between a “shameless puppet and her unscrupulous puppeteer”.
Trump had made the stakes clear after Maduro’s capture, warning that Rodríguez would “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she did not align herself with the United States. Since then, her administration has made a series of concessions, including ceding control of Venezuela’s oil revenues to Washington and agreeing to the controversial 65bn-barrel oil deal.
Yet Rodríguez has also emerged with strengthened authority. Trump has repeatedly praised her “fantastic” and “terrific” leadership while giving comparatively little attention to her principal rival, María Corina Machado. Machado, the opposition leader, left Venezuela late last year to receive her Nobel peace prize in Oslo and has been unable to return. She is now living in exile in Panama, and reportedly attempted to re-enter Venezuela three times this week.
Orlando Pérez, a Latin America expert at the University of North Texas at Dallas, rejected the idea that the meeting was primarily a defeat for Rodríguez. “It’s a huge triumph [for her]. She got the photo op she wanted. I frankly don’t think you can overestimate how important the photo op was for her,” he said. In his view, the photograph legitimised her position as president and signalled that Washington remained willing to work with her.
For Trump, the same image served a different purpose. It allowed him to tell his supporters that he had “won Venezuela” by taking control of its vast oil reserves following the January operation. As Pérez put it, the picture was a “win-win” for both leaders: Rodríguez gained international standing, while Trump gained a visual symbol of American leverage.
A wider contest over Latin America
The meeting carried historical resonance. The last time the leaders of the United States and Venezuela had met was in 2015, when Barack Obama and Maduro spoke briefly at a regional summit in Panama. Over the following decade, Maduro became an international pariah as his government presided over economic collapse, entrenched authoritarianism and increasingly severe international sanctions.
At that 2015 summit, Obama argued that the era in which “the US could meddle with impunity” in Latin America had ended. Trump’s approach has been markedly different. Washington is now seeking to reassert its influence across the region, using military power, economic pressure and control over strategic resources.
Trump’s campaign has also targeted Cuba’s communist government through economic strangulation. The United States has further been accused of trying to influence Brazil’s presidential election in favour of the far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro through diplomatic and economic pressure. Those claims have intensified concern in Latin America that Washington is preparing to reclaim the informal sphere of dominance it once regarded as its own backyard.
Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pushed back during his address to the UN assembly, without directly naming the United States. “We will not allow the enemies of democracy – internal or external – to attack the will of the people. Brazilian democracy belongs to the Brazilians,” Lula said as he prepares for a difficult re-election campaign in October.
“Brazil doesn’t fit into anyone’s back yard,” he added, while calling for elections in Venezuela. Lula did not meet Rodríguez during her New York visit, but he insisted that “the people of Venezuela deserve to decide their own future”.
Why it Matters
The Rodríguez-Trump meeting is more than a curious photograph taken against the backdrop of the United Nations. It marks a decisive shift in Venezuela’s relationship with Washington, one in which access to oil and strategic minerals appears to have displaced democracy, accountability and the return of exiled opponents as the central concerns. For Europe and the wider international community, the episode raises an uncomfortable question: whether the rules-based order will be defended when the interests of powerful states are at stake, or merely invoked when convenient.
