Donald Trump has his long-awaited Nobel Peace Prize, but only symbolically.
Yesterday at the White House, Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was awarded the prize late last year, gave her medal to the POTUS in recognition of what she described as his committment to Venezuela’s freedom. This came after Trump greenlit an American operation that has seen Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro arrested and taken to the U.S.
Trump has long longed for a Nobel Prize and has previously criticized Machado while declining to endorse her as Venezuela’s new leader. He has instead been co-operating with the acting head of state in Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice-president.
At the White House yesterday, however, Machado was full of praise for the POTUS.
“I presented the president of the United States the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize,” she was reported by news outlets to have said after the meeting. “We can count on President Trump.”
Trump said on social media that the move was “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”
Perhaps with the knowledge that this event was imminent, however, the Nobel Peace Center posted a statement last week saying that a prize “cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others,” adding: “The decision is final and stands for all time.”
Taking to X yesterday, the center reiterated this point. “A medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot,” it posted in a lengthy thread about the history of the medal.