Venezuela's interim leader meets Trump blocks away from jailed predecessor

Delcy Rodríguez stood in a Manhattan hotel a few blocks from Trump Tower on a Tuesday evening in late September, smiling for the camera alongside Donald Trump. The interim president of Venezuela had just secured what she called a "historic" meeting with the American leader—a photograph, a handshake, a moment of diplomatic recognition. It was less than nine months after Trump had ordered the military operation that snatched her boss, Nicolás Maduro, from Caracas and deposited him in a Brooklyn prison seven miles away.

The encounter took place at the Lotte New York Palace, a five-star hotel, during the UN general assembly. Rodríguez had been asked by an American reporter whether she planned to visit Maduro during her time in New York. She did not answer. Instead, she met with Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. The meeting was brief but, by all accounts, cordial. Rubio described it afterward as focused on Venezuela's economic recovery and political transition.

In a 133-word Instagram statement, Rodríguez framed the encounter in the language of statecraft: strengthening bilateral relationships, advancing cooperation in energy, mining, and security. She made no mention of Maduro. Hours before the meeting, she had sat in the UN general assembly hall listening to Trump celebrate the "massive military operation" that had captured him. Trump called Maduro an "outlaw dictator" and "a real criminal," and boasted about the oil deal that had followed—"the largest oil deal in history," he said. Observers noted what appeared to be a wince cross Rodríguez's face. In the photograph with Trump, some detected tension in her body language: her left fist appeared to be clenching.

The optics were complicated. Critics in Venezuela saw humiliation—a socialist politician who had spent years denouncing American imperialism now posing cheerfully with the man who had orchestrated her predecessor's abduction. One opposition figure called her a "shameless puppet" meeting her "unscrupulous puppeteer." Trump himself had warned Rodríguez after Maduro's capture that she would "pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro," if she did not comply with his demands. Since then, she had made a series of concessions: ceding control of Venezuela's oil revenues to Washington, agreeing to the 65-billion-barrel oil deal that Trump had just celebrated.

Yet others saw the photograph differently. Orlando Pérez, a Latin America expert at the University of North Texas at Dallas, argued that Rodríguez had achieved exactly what she needed: legitimacy. The image signaled to other world leaders that Washington was willing to work with her, that she was the recognized leader of Venezuela. For Trump, the meeting served a different purpose—proof to his supporters that he had "won Venezuela" by seizing control of its oil reserves through military force. "It's a huge triumph for her," Pérez said of the photograph. "I frankly don't think you can overestimate how important the photo op was for her."

The last time a US president had met with Venezuela's leader was in 2015, when Barack Obama and Nicolás Maduro spoke briefly at a regional summit in Panama. Obama had acknowledged that the era in which "the US could meddle with impunity" in Latin America had ended. Trump's approach was fundamentally different. Beyond Venezuela, his administration was attempting to reassert American dominance across the region—trying to topple Cuba's government through economic pressure, and facing accusations of interference in Brazil's presidential election. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pushed back at the UN assembly, declaring that "Brazil doesn't fit into anyone's back yard" and calling for elections in Venezuela. He did not meet with Rodríguez but said the Venezuelan people deserved to decide their own future.

Rodríguez, meanwhile, had consolidated power. Trump appeared more interested in securing Venezuela's natural resources than in pushing for democratic elections that might displace her. He had repeatedly praised her "fantastic" and "terrific" leadership while sidelining the main opposition figure, María Corina Machado, who had fled the country and was now exiled in Panama. Machado had reportedly attempted to return to Venezuela three times that week and failed each time. The photograph in Manhattan—Rodríguez and Trump both smiling, both signaling to their respective constituencies that they had won something—captured the strange new reality of Venezuelan politics: a government that had come to power through American military intervention, now dependent on American approval, trading democratic possibility for the appearance of stability and the certainty of oil revenue.