But when pressed, she took pains to avoid giving any details on her plans to return home or any timetable for elections in Venezuela.
As Machado was meeting with President Trump at the White House on Thursday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Venezuela to meet with acting President Delcy Rodríguez, further confirmation that Maduro's longtime second in command was the woman the White House preferred to see managing Venezuela for now.
Speaking to reporters at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, Machado said she was “profoundly, profoundly confident that we will have an orderly transition” to democracy that would also transform Venezuela's self-proclaimed socialist government long hostile to the U.S. into a strong U.S. ally.
She rejected the notion that Trump chose to work with Rodríguez, Maduro's former vice president, over her opposition movement, whose candidate was widely believed to have won the 2024 presidential election.
“This has nothing to do with a tension or decision between Delcy Rodríguez and myself,” she said. But she stopped short of elaborating, instead pivoting to vague assertions about her movement’s popular mandate and the government's dismal human rights record.
In apparent deference to Trump, she provided almost no details on Friday about what they discussed or even what she thought the U.S. should do in Venezuela.
“I think I don’t need to urge the president on specific things," she said.
Machado crisscrossed Venezuela ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, rallying millions of voters looking to end 25 years of single party rule. When she was barred from the race, a previously unknown former diplomat, Edmundo Gonzalez, replaced her on the ballot. But election officials loyal to the ruling party declared Maduro the winner despite ample credible evidence to the contrary.
Machado, revered by millions in Venezuela, went into hiding but vowed to continue fighting until democracy was restored. She reemerged months later to pick up her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, the first time in more than a decade that she had left Venezuela.
