The president of the United States, Donald Trump, stated this Wednesday that he had spoken by telephone that same morning with the acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, in charge of the country since the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro on January 3. The Republican’s surprise announcement comes one day before the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner is received at the White House.
“We had a great conversation today, and he is a great person,” Trump said of Rodríguez, whom he did not call by name, to journalists gathered in the Oval Office. “In fact, we have worked very well with her. Marco Rubio is in contact with her. I spoke with her this morning. We had a call, a long call, we talked about many things, and I think we are getting along very well with Venezuela.”
The president of the United States was responding to a question from a reporter, who apparently asked him about the Venezuelan Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello, whose name also did not come up in the exchange. “He doesn’t seem very willing to collaborate,” said the journalist. “I don’t know who that number two is, I know number one,” Trump responded, referring to Delcy Rodríguez. He also boasted about the good progress of relations between Washington and Caracas. “They just gave us 50 million barrels [de petróleo] daily,” he added, as a test.
Hours earlier, he had appeared in Caracas before journalists for the first time since Maduro’s arrest. It was an intervention without questions. In a brief statement, he assured that “Venezuela is opening up to a new political moment that allows understanding from divergence and ideological political diversity.”
The acting president reported on the releases of prisoners from which, she said, 406 people have benefited. He also tried to separate these releases from US intervention. He stated that they had started last December, and that they were ordered by Maduro himself.
“In December 2025, a process of releasing people deprived of liberty had begun to open spaces for understanding, for coexistence, for tolerance,” said Rodríguez from the Miraflores Palace. “This process remains open and is precisely what we have been coordinating with the justice system in Venezuela.”
Rodríguez did not talk about any call with Trump, but he did talk about a meeting with his brother, the head of Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, and the Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello. The three leaders of Chavismo appeared together in front of the cameras, after Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were captured and taken to New York 11 days ago.
The call with Maduro’s trusted woman and the imminent meeting with the leader of the Venezuelan opposition speak eloquently of the double strategy that Trump is playing, who a few hours after Maduro’s capture assured that he did not see Machado ready to lead Venezuela.
Tomorrow she will go to the White House to try to assert her suitability as an interlocutor in the United States’ plan to protect Venezuela and take charge of its oil. Also, to decipher what task will ultimately correspond to the Venezuelan opposition, in view of Trump’s first commitment to Rodríguez.
