Trump welcomes Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado in closed-door meeting

Thursday’s meeting was the first time the two leaders encountered one another face-to-face.

But the visit was an unusually subdued one for Trump, who normally welcomes foreign leaders to the Oval Office for a news conference with reporters.

This time, however, Trump kept his meeting with Machado private, away from clicking camera shutters and shouted questions from reporters.

Trump has backed Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as interim leader of the South American country, despite Machado’s claims that the opposition has a mandate to govern.

Rodriguez’s inaugural state of the union address as president coincided with Machado’s arrival at the White House, a fact that could have contributed to the low-key nature of the meeting.

“We are used to seeing the president ushering in the cameras, making comments, talking away,” Al Jazeera correspondent Mike Hanna reported as evening fell in the capital.

“But on this particular occasion, [the meeting] was held behind closed doors. In fact, we haven’t even had a formal readout from the White House of that meeting with Machado.”

Still, Machado struck an upbeat tone as she exited the White House and strolled onto Pennsylvania Avenue, where she was thronged by reporters and supporters seeking selfies.

She and Trump spent only a few hours together in the White House, as they discussed Venezuela’s future over lunch.

Machado confirmed to the media that she followed through with her plans to give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize, an honour the US president has long coveted for himself.

“I presented the president of the United States the medal, the Nobel Peace Prize,” Machado told reporters.

As she offered Trump the prize, Machado said she recounted a historical anecdote, about an interaction between Simon Bolivar – the Venezuelan military officer who helped liberate much of South America from colonial rule – and the Marquis de Lafayette, a Revolutionary War hero in the US.

“I told him this. Listen to this. Two hundred years ago, General Lafayette gave Simon Bolivar a medal with George Washington’s face,” Machado said. “Bolivar since then kept that medal for the rest of his life.”

The Nobel Committee, however, has clarified that the prize is non-transferable and cannot be shared.

Machado was announced as the recipient of the prize in October, in recognition of her efforts to advance Venezuelan democracy.

“I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause,” Machado wrote on October 10. She secretly left Venezuela, where she had been living in hiding, in December to travel to Norway and collect the medal.

However, the Nobel Prize organization has clarified that, under the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, a Nobel Peace Prize cannot be revoked, transferred, or shared under any circumstances, and decisions of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are final and not subject to appeal.