Unusually noble: Machado honours Trump for US role in Venezuela

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she presented her Nobel Peace Prize to US President Donald Trump, who described it as a “wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”

Machado, who has on previous occasions said that she would give her Nobel prize to Trump, met the American President in the White House Thursday, a closely-watched meeting that came days after the US carried out a military strike in Venezuela and captured its leader Nicolás Maduro.

“It was my Great Honour to meet María Corina Machado, of Venezuela, today. She is a wonderful woman who has been through so much. María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

A photograph released on social media shows Machado standing in the Oval Office with Trump, who is holding a frame that contains the Nobel Peace Prize, with a caption “the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize Medal awarded to María Corina Machado.”

“To President Donald J Trump — In gratitude for your extraordinary leadership in promoting peace through strength, advancing diplomacy and defending liberty and prosperity,” a message accompanying the medal said. “Presented as a personal symbol of gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan people in recognition of President Trump’s principled and decisive action to secure a free Venezuela,”. The courage of America and its president Donald J. Trump will never be forgotten by the Venezuelan people,” the message, signed by Machado and dated Washington, January 15, 2026 said.

After her meeting, Machado told reporters that she “presented the President of the United States the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize... Medal of the Nobel Peace Prize as recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom.”

Trump has long coveted the Nobel Peace Prize, an honour that was bestowed on former US President Barack Obama within months of his presidency in 2009.

Trump has repeatedly taken credit for ending eight wars, including the May 2025 conflict between India and Pakistan, in as many months of the first year of his second term in the White House. He has said that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for each of the eight wars that he has ended. Trump has also questioned why Obama was given the Nobel Prize, saying the former president did not do anything to deserve the honour.

Last week, Trump said that no one in history is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than him since he has stopped eight wars. He rebuked Obama for the getting the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after assuming office in 2009 even though he “didn’t do anything.”

“I can’t think of anybody in history that should get the Nobel Prize more than me and I don’t want to be bragging, but nobody else settled wars. Obama got the Nobel Prize. He had no idea why. He still has no idea. He walks around, he says, ‘I got the Nobel Prize’.

Why did he get a Nobel Prize? He got it almost immediately upon attaining office, and he didn’t do anything, and he was a bad president,” Trump had said.

Trump asserted that one should get a Nobel Prize for “every war you stopped. These were major wars. These were wars that nobody thought could be stopped...So in theory, you should get the Nobel Prize for every war you stopped. Every one of them was major. But I don’t care about that. What I care about is saving lives. I’ve saved tens of millions of lives,” he had said.

Nobel Peace Centre, the museum about the Nobel Peace Prize, in a post on X, quoted the Norwegian Nobel Committee as saying that the Nobel prize cannot be transferred to others.

“Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others. The decision is final and stands for all time,” the Committee has said.

Noting that “one truth remains”, the Nobel Peace Centre added that “a medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot.”