Trump latest: Venezuela’s opposition leader arrives at White House after she vowed to share Nobel Peace Prize
President Donald Trump is meeting with Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado at the White House for a closed-door lunch Thursday – days after the U.S. captured the country’s now-deposed leader, Nicolás Maduro.
Trump told reporters that he expects to have a “good meeting” with Machado, with whom he’s had a somewhat chilly relationship since she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her efforts to turn Venezuela into a democracy.
Machado has praised Trump publicly and even vowed to share her award with him, in the hopes of landing on the U.S. president’s good side.
Hours before the lunch, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a rarely-used law allowing the president to deploy the military to quell civil disturbances, in Minnesota if state lawmakers didn’t stop protesters from “attacking” ICE officers.
Administration officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, have fiercely defended ICE officers’ actions in Minnesota after an officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good, and another officer shot an immigrant in the leg in self-defense.
