Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez has gone public with details of her first face-to-face with President Trump.
The meeting, held Tuesday at a Trump-hosted reception at the Lotte Palace Hotel in New York, came eight months after U.S. Forces captured and deposed former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January. Rodríguez, who previously served as Maduro’s vice president, posted about the encounter on X alongside a photo of herself standing beside the American commander-in-chief.
“We held a historic meeting with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, with whom we discussed strengthening the bilateral relationship between our countries and advancing a cooperation agenda in strategic areas such as energy, mining, and security and other matters of common interest,” Rodríguez wrote on the platform.
The Venezuelan leader also expressed her “gratitude” for the Trump administration’s “resolute support” following a devastating June 24 earthquake, and for “their backing of the reintegration process of our country in multilateral spaces,” She added that “Venezuela and the United States share a historical relationship that, in this new stage, we are called to channel through dialogue.”
“We will continue to promote a diplomacy at the service of the national interest, oriented toward achieving concrete results and collective benefits for the Venezuelan people,” Rodríguez continued in her social media post.
Trump arrived at the pull-aside with a heavy-hitting delegation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller all joined the president, according to the White House. Rodríguez, for her part, reportedly brought her vice president of economy, her oil minister and officials from state oil company PDVSA, sources said.
The sit-down capped a day in which Trump had already used the United Nations podium to trumpet his Venezuela policy. In his General Assembly speech earlier Tuesday, the president highlighted the release of hundreds of Venezuelan political prisoners and the massive oil deal struck with Caracas as concrete results since the predawn raid on Maduro’s compound.
“To the victor belong the spoils,” Trump declared at the UN, describing the oil agreement signed last month as “perhaps the biggest deal ever made.” He indicated he is targeting roughly $100 billion in investment for Venezuela’s oil sector under the arrangement, which gives the U.S. Control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven reserves in the socialist nation.
The oil pact and Rodríguez’s Washington outreach mark a dramatic pivot for a leader who spent years as one of Maduro’s most visible international defenders. Rodríguez served as Venezuela’s foreign minister before becoming vice president under the deposed strongman, making her current role as Trump’s interlocutor all the more striking.
Trump’s UN address framed the Venezuela operation as a signature foreign policy win, repeatedly referring to Maduro as an “outlaw dictator” and casting the oil deal as proof that American intervention had delivered tangible economic gains. The president’s rhetoric suggested he views the arrangement as a template for other regional engagements.
The bilateral reception at the Lotte Palace Hotel represented the most direct engagement yet between the Trump administration and the post-Maduro Venezuelan government, though CIA Director John Ratcliffe had already held a two-hour meeting with Rodríguez in Caracas earlier in the transition period.
Rodríguez’s visit to New York signals an ongoing effort to normalize relations with Washington while securing the investment and diplomatic recognition her government needs to stabilize the crisis-wracked country.