President Donald Trump will keep the Nobel Peace Prize medal offered to him Thursday by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, a senior White House official told NOTUS.
The gift was given during a more than two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House Thursday afternoon, part of an extraordinary bid to win his sympathies and shape the future of her country.
Speaking to a massive crowd outside the Capitol after meeting with lawmakers following her trip to the White House, Machado said she told Trump a story of another medal: this one given by General Marquis de Lafayette, a Revolutionary War hero, to South American military leader and statesman Simón Bolívar. She said it became a symbol of “brotherhood” between the people of the U.S. and Venezuela, and expressed hope that giving up her Nobel Peace Prize would go down in history as a similar gesture.
“The people of Bolívar are giving back to the heir of Washington a medal, in this case the Nobel Peace Prize, as a recognition for his unique commitment to our freedom,” Machado said.
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Machado then departed for a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators on Capitol Hill that included more than a dozen attendees from both parties.
While on Capitol Hill, Machado told reporters in Spanish that the White House meeting went “excellent.”
Trump has been vying for the Nobel since 2018, during his first term, when he suggested “everyone thinks” he deserves the award for his strengthening of relations with North Korea. So far during his second term, Trump has continued his push for the Nobel by crediting himself with ending “eight wars,” though his actions since resuming the presidency were not eligible for consideration as part of last year’s nomination.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Machado its 2025 Peace Prize “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
Before Trump lost the 2025 award to Machado, Trump preempted his rejection by saying he would not get the award because “they only give it to liberals.”
Machado has been in talks with the Trump administration for months about sharing her award with Trump, but the Nobel Peace Center has declared that once awarded, the Nobel cannot be revoked, transferred or shared with others. Just hours before Machado’s meeting with Trump, it reiterated the sentiment in a post on X.
It remains unclear what else was discussed during the pair’s meeting, though Sen. Rick Scott said in a video shortly after Machado left the Capitol that she discussed the current leadership of Venezuela, arguing that it should not be considered legitimate until elections can be held.
“She was very appreciative of the U.S. military, what they’ve done, but it’s not over … We have got to continue to understand that Delcy Rodriguez is not the leader, she was never elected as the president, she’s the leader, still, of drug cartels,” Scott said.
Rodriguez was appointed as the country’s interim vice president shortly after Trump’s late-night arrest of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, earlier this month. Trump has been in communication with Rodriguez and called her a “terrific person” on Wednesday.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, in a post on X, said Democrats were “fawning over” Machado “as she made it clear that arresting Maduro was the most crucial event in modern Latin American history.”
“Irony,” Moreno concluded.
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