Venezuelan president-elect meets with Mike Waltz, Trump's national security advisor

Venezuela's elected and legitimate president, Edmundo González Urrutia, met with Republican Congressman Mike Waltz, the national security advisor designate for President-elect Donald Trump.

The meeting came just a couple of hours after Gonzalez, who is touring the region, had a conversation at the White House with outgoing President Joe Biden.

The Venezuelan diplomat, who legitimately won the elections in July 2024 and was forced into exile by the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, also said that his team is in constant contact with President Trump's team, with whom he has not yet been able to arrange a meeting.

However, the meeting between Waltz and Gonzalez marks the first major in-person contact between the incoming administration and the Venezuelan opposition, which is operating in decisive hours to try to regain democracy and the country's institutions, taken over by the Chavista regime for two and a half decades.

"I talked at length with the National Security Advisor, appointed by President-elect Donald Trump, Mike Waltz," President-elect Gonzalez said on X. "Among several topics we talked, in detail, about the civic protest of Venezuelans, this January 9. He assured us that the United States, and the world, will be alert about what happens in our country."

Also in the meeting were Republican congressmen María Elvira Salazar, Carlos Giménez and Mario Díaz-Balart.

González refers to the massive demonstration called by opposition leader María Corina Machado, who is in Venezuela but hiding from Venezuelan authorities who seek to imprison her.

Machado, who has been leading the Venezuelan opposition for more than a year, anointed Gonzalez as the opposition presidential candidate for the July 28 elections after the Maduro regime did not allow her to run and blocked her first substitute candidate, Professor Corina Yoris.

Despite his political inexperience and advanced age, Gonzalez accepted the challenge, campaigned with Machado throughout the country, and raced in the presidential elections, winning by a wide margin of two to one. However, the Venezuelan National Electoral Council, controlled by Maduro, published results that did not match the voting records and named the socialist dictator the winner.

Since then, Maduro's dictatorship has ignored repeated requests from the international community to reveal the records, which show Gonzalez as the winner, and increased political persecution against dissidents and Venezuelan civil society. Particularly, he attacked opposition parties and Machado's allies, who had been operating underground for months.

There are multiple reports of arbitrary detentions, cases of torture and even extrajudicial executions.

Due to the political crisis, Edmundo Gonzalez was forced into exile in Spain months after the elections. However, in recent weeks, he has begun a diplomatic tour and promised to return to Venezuela on January 10, when the Venezuelan president-elect will be sworn in.

The Chavista regime, for its part, plans to swear Maduro in again and has militarized the capital city, Caracas, notoriously increasing surveillance.

Machado, meanwhile, called on Venezuelans to take to the streets en masse on January 9, in what could be a last chance to change the game and finally depose the dictator Maduro.