President Donald Trump has finally been presented with the Nobel Peace Prize, and all it took was a military operation with 100 or so casualties.
The 2025 winner of the award, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, told reporters Thursday she “presented” the medal to Trump during a meeting at the White House.
“I presented the President of the United States the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize,” Machado said, comparing it to the Continental Army General Marquis de Lafayette giving Venezuelan revolutionary Simón Bolívar a medal bearing an image of George Washington.
“The people of Bolivar are giving back to the heir of Washington a medal, in this case, the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize, in a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom,” Machado said.
Trump has long coveted the prize and said he deserved it, even as he has ordered military strikes in seven foreign countries in the first year of his second term.
In a post on Truth Social, the president said it was a “great honor” to meet Machado.
“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,” Trump wrote, apparently referring to Machado giving ― and himself receiving ― the gift.
The Nobel Peace Center noted Thursday that the prize is not actually transferable: “A medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot.”
Machado lived in hiding after being kicked off the 2024 presidential ballot by that country’s former dictator president, Nicolas Maduro, whom Trump ordered captured this month in a military raid that killed around 100 Venezuelans and Cubans.
Rather than throw support to Machado, or even call for elections, the Trump administration has essentially left Maduro’s regime intact, with the president praising interim president Delcy Rodriguez, a Maduro loyalist, as a “terrific person” this week.
Republican lawmakers from South Florida, whose districts are home to many people of Cuban and Venezuelan descent, had hoped Trump would back Machado for president of Venezuela, but Trump has previously said she’s not respected enough to lead the country.