The Nobel meet: Trump gets the medal not honour, Machado has the title not power

On Thursday, Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado presented her prestigious Nobel Peace Prize to US President Donald Trump. The American leader aspired to win a Nobel since 2017, the first time he entered the White House. He often mocked former US President Barack Obama for winning the award, frequently questioning his eligibility.

However, what went down on Thursday was bitter and sweet for both Trump and Machado. Both had different expectations from the ceremony, which took place at the White House. While Trump expected to receive the glory with the prize, Mochado saw it as a bid to appease the Trump administration and a way to garner its support for the rise of the opposition in Venezuela.

It is pertinent to note that Machado handed her award to Trump just a fortnight after the US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, marking an end to his draconian regime in the Latin American nation. Maduro is currently in a famous detention centre in New York, where he has been charged with drug trafficking.

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Here’s how the Thursday event was significant to both Trump and Machado but bore no significant fruit.

Trump got the prize, but not the title

Shortly after Machado revealed that she handed her Nobel to Trump, the American leader shared a message on his TruthSocial platform, saying he was “honoured” to finally receive the prize. In the photograph of the occasion, Trump was seen grinning broadly as he posed with Machado in the Oval Office, holding the oversized frame.

“Maria presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done,” Trump later effused on social media. “Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you, Maria!” However, the whole ordeal turned out to be pretty hollow for Trump.

While he can hang the medal on the wall, Machado would still remain the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. That was made clear a few hours later by Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, who said that “receiving the symbols of the Peace Prize does not make anyone a Peace Prize laureate.”

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Interestingly, Machado is not the only person to handover her Nobel; it has been done before. In 1943, Knut Hamsun, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1920, sent it to the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. However, it was lost after Goebbels committed suicide in 1945. Hence, Trump now stands with just the medal and not the honour.

Machado: Retains the title but not the power

Meanwhile, the plan to gift her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump also did not seem to work for Machado as of now. After the meeting between Trump and the Venezuelan opposition leader, the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, was in Caracas meeting with Delcy Rodríguez, the interim president of Venezuela.

Rodriguez was part of the establishment that barred Machado from running in the election, one of the numerous steps the Maduro government took to fix the outcome of the 2024 polls. The Trump administration has cornered Machado right after toppling the Maduro government.

Trump has been sceptical of Machado and has expressed concerns that her movement would be unable to control the security situation in Venezuela. But Machado appeared to be playing a long game.

In an interview last week, Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator and one of Trump’s supporters and informal advisers, asked the opposition leader, “Did you at any point offer to give him the Nobel Peace Prize?” Machado said that “it hasn’t happened yet, but I certainly would love to be able to personally tell him that he, and the Venezuelan people, shared in it.

Things changed significantly recently as Machado bets that sooner or later, the survivors of the Maduro regime will be ousted, and so giving Trump the Nobel is seen as a long-term investment.

“I do not doubt that President Trump, his administration and the people of the United States support democracy, justice, freedom and the mandate of the people of Venezuela,” she said on Friday in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, ticking off four values that Trump has spoken about in the past. Hence, many are looking at the move as Machado’s way of staying in Trump’s good books.