Trump speaks with Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado
US President Donald Trump said that Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado called him and told him that she accepted the award in her honor.
The White House had previously criticized the Nobel Committee’s decision to award the peace prize to the Venezuelan opposition leader instead of Trump and accused the committee of choosing “politics over peace”.
Trump lobbied aggressively for the award and touted his role in brokering international ceasefire agreements.
In a post on social media platform he said.
“The Nobel Committee proved that it puts politics before peace.”
When asked about the Nobel prize, Trump did not directly criticize the committee’s decision but credited it for solving many wars and said Machado could give him the prize if he wanted.
“Actually, the person who received the Nobel Prize called today, called me and said, ‘I’m accepting this in your honor, because you really deserve it,'” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. he said.
“It was a very nice thing to do. I didn’t say, ‘Then give it to me,’ but he might have thought so. He was very kind.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Machado the annual prize for “brave defenders of freedom who rose up and resisted” authoritarian leadership.
Trump had campaigned for the award and just this week announced a ceasefire and hostage agreement to end the war in Gaza.
Trump says he has ended eight wars since taking office and deserves the peace prize, but has recently said he expects the award to be deactivated.
“Are you going to take the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’re going to give it to a guy who did nothing,” Trump told top US military leaders in September.
If he didn’t understand that, he said, it would be a “great insult” to the United States.
It must be made before January 31 for Nobel candidates to be eligible for the 2025 award. Trump returned to the White House for his second term on January 20.
Trump acknowledged Friday that the committee’s practical decision focused on 2024, when he is campaigning for president, but argued that his contributions to peace were so great that they should still give him the award.
“I ran for office in ’24. But there are also people who say we’ve done so much that they should be doing it.”
