US President Donald Trump met Venezuela's acting President, Delcy Rodríguez, in New York on the evening of September 22, in their first sit-down since Washington's January operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power, as the two governments looked to build on a rapprochement anchored by last month's oil agreement.

The talks took place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly's 81st session. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller also took part, according to a White House disclosure. US officials characterised it as an unscheduled "pull-aside" rather than a formal bilateral meeting, and no transcript or readout of the conversation had been published.

According to El Nacional, the meeting was held behind closed doors, with no media access, during a reception Trump hosted for foreign leaders at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel in Manhattan, beginning shortly after 7.40pm local time. The area was placed under heavy security by the New York Police Department and the Secret Service, while members of the Venezuelan diaspora protested outside, the newspaper said.

Writing on X after the meeting, Rodríguez called it "a historic meeting" in which the two sides "discussed strengthening the bilateral relationship between our countries and advancing a cooperation agenda in strategic areas such as energy, mining, security and other matters of mutual interest." She thanked the Trump administration for its support after devastating earthquakes struck Venezuela on June 24 and for helping Caracas rejoin multilateral forums, and said the two countries shared a "historic connection" that both were "now called upon to steer through dialogue" towards "concrete results and collective benefits for the Venezuelan people."

The meeting followed a combative address Trump delivered to the General Assembly earlier on September 22, in which he boasted about the January operation that detained "outlaw, dictator, real criminal Nicolas Maduro" before more than 100 heads of state and government.

Of that raid, he said "the spoils belong to the victor." He also repeated a claim that "hundreds" of Venezuelan political prisoners had been freed and hailed the recent oil agreement as "the largest oil deal in history," saying it would benefit both countries and help lower global energy costs. Notably, he did not repeat the personal praise he has extended to Rodríguez in the past, when he called her "a fantastic person," nor did he offer other words of praise for her this time.

Analysts consulted by Efecto Cocuyo said the tone of Trump's remarks underlined the imbalance in the relationship. "Delcy Rodríguez is a hostage of Trump as long as he is in the White House," said María Isabel Puerta Riera, a political scientist. "She has to do what he says; that wasn't the result of diplomacy, but of Maduro's capture through a military operation. She could be next if she steps out of line; that's not diplomacy." Puerta Riera also questioned what domestic benefit Trump derives from the Venezuela operation, noting petrol prices near $5 a gallon in Florida and an unresolved war with Iran ahead of November's US midterm elections.

Erick Obermaier, a political consultant, said Rodríguez's presence at the UN existed only because Washington recognised her government, undermining any narrative of a diplomatic achievement. He noted that senior Chavista figures had stopped attacking Trump directly and now merely rejected individual remarks, which he said was itself evidence of Washington's oversight of Caracas.

The shift in posture is a marked reversal for an anti-imperialist movement that built its foreign policy on confrontation with Washington. Rodríguez, then a Maduro deputy, told the same UN forum in 2019 that US sanctions amounted to "state terrorism" and accused Washington of extending its "imperial claws," while Hugo Chávez's 2006 address to the assembly, delivered a day after George W Bush's, declared that "the devil" had spoken from the same podium and "it still smells of sulphur." The meeting was the first formal sit-down between a sitting US president and a Chavista-aligned leader since Bill Clinton met Hugo Chávez as president-elect in 1999, with the only intervening contact a brief, informal exchange between Barack Obama and Maduro at the 2015 Summit of the Americas in Panama.

Opposition figures in Venezuela have criticised the meeting, with some sectors arguing that Rodríguez's presence in New York legitimised what they described as a continuation of the same governing structure under new management. Government supporters in Caracas, meanwhile, were called to a rally on September 22 in support of Rodríguez, whose own address to the assembly is scheduled for September 24, in what organisers framed as a defence of national sovereignty, according to Efecto Cocuyo. Yet Chavista hardliners have staged protests in recent weeks against Rodríguez's turn towards Washington following Maduro’s ouster, which they regard as a betrayal and a sell-out.

The Trump-Rodriguez meeting builds on the oil agreement Trump announced on August 28, under which Venezuela granted a US-backed operator rights to develop 17 oilfields together holding an estimated 65bn barrels of crude, about a fifth of the country's proven reserves, through a joint venture structure. The arrangement promises more than $100bn in investment and up to $209bn in tax revenue for Caracas over 25 years, according to figures released by the US administration, which said the funds would go towards hospitals, food, salaries and social programmes. However, the deal's Pentagon-linked financing structure and the absence of a competitive tender have drawn scrutiny from analysts, along with questions over whether Rodríguez, as an interim leader, has the authority to bind future governments to a multi-decade contract.

The rapprochement has coincided with a partial, closely watched easing of repression in Caracas, where the government and a faction of the opposition are conducting US-sponsored talks about a potential transition. Washington removed Venezuela on September 16 from its list of countries deemed to have "failed demonstrably" to combat drug trafficking, the first time it had escaped that designation since 2005. Human Rights Watch said this month it had observed "important signs" of reduced repression following a rare visit to Caracas, but warned that the state apparatus behind past abuses remained intact and that hundreds of political prisoners had yet to be freed.

Opposition leader María Corina Machado, based outside Venezuela since December, has been sidelined by the White House in favour of Rodríguez. She has reportedly been barred from returning to Caracas by the US, over fears her presence could disrupt the lucrative oil deals inked with the interim government. This week she backed a US senator's call for Venezuelan presidential elections in July 2027, a timeline that neither the Rodríguez government nor Washington has endorsed.