Juan Guaidó Meets with U.S. Leaders in Washington, D.C.
President Donald Trump receives Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó. (Flickr)
To conclude his global tour, Venezuela’s opposition leader and internationally recognized interim President Juan Guaidó visited the United States to meet with American leaders. After he attended President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on February 4, the two leaders met at the White House.
During his annual State of the Union address, President Trump praised Guaidó as “the true and legitimate president of Venezuela,” while calling the country’s sitting president Nicolas Maduro “an illegitimate ruler” and “a tyrant who brutalizes his people.”
“Maduro’s grip of tyranny will be smashed and broken,” Trump touted before Congress. “All Americans are united with the Venezuelan people in their righteous struggle for freedom.”
While many have perceived Trump’s anti-socialism rhetoric as a political statement to rally support for the upcoming 2020 presidential election, both Democrats and Republicans welcomed the Venezuelan leader with great applause.
Guaidó expressed gratitude to the United States for its support, tweeting afterwards, “On behalf of millions of Venezuelans who continue to stand and fight: Thank you, people of the USA.”
The next morning, Guaidó met with Republican leaders including Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere.
In the afternoon, Guaidó met privately with Trump in the Oval Office. However, reporters had been dismissed from the White House that morning, as Senator Mitt Romney had announced his decision to vote in favor of one of the impeachment charges.
Despite Guaidó winning the popular vote in the 2018 election, both U.S. and domestic Venezuelan support for the opposition leader have seemed to wane. His Tuesday meeting with Trump was a major victory for his anti-Maduro movement. Guaidó had been trying to obtain a meeting with American leaders for a long time, and although he has not yet revealed significant advances in support by other leaders, U.S. demonstration of bolstered support has undoubtedly increased his momentum at home.
Guillermo Zubillaga, a Venezuela specialist at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, believes the meeting is “huge for Guaidó” because “[i]t erases all the doubts about his leadership … it unites people around him and it emboldens him.”
“I don’t know how this trip could have been more successful,” he said.
Others, such as Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, disapproved of the Trump administration’s actions, tweeting that Trump’s hope of subduing Maduro by reaffirming U.S. support for Guaidó was “an idea, not a strategy, and it had no hope of working.”
Before reaching the United States, Guaidó had stopped in Colombia, Europe, and Canada, attending the Davos summit and meeting with world leaders including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Guaidó’s departure from Venezuela had defied a travel ban imposed by Venezuelan courts, yet Trump threatened “very significant consequences" for Maduro if he were to disrupt Guaidó’s return.
Guaidó concluded his world tour with a final stop in Miami, home to one of the largest Venezuelan populations outside of Venezuela. “All options are on the table – but also underneath it too,” he told supporters during his rally.
Meanwhile, more than 30 million people continue to suffer from the economic, political, and humanitarian crises in Venezuela. The scarcity of food and other resources has prompted more than 4.5 million refugees to flee the country in the last few years. Despite the ongoing struggle, Guaidó and his coalition continue to fight.