Venezuela's Machado: No Regrets Giving Nobel to Trump

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Venezuela opposition leader Maria Corina Machado stated on Saturday that she has no regrets about symbolically handing over her Nobel Peace Prize to President Donald Trump back in January.

“In the world, there is a leader, a head of state who risked the lives of his country’s citizens for Venezuela’s freedom,” she said during a press conference in Madrid.

Machado gave her Nobel medal to Trump during a meeting at the White House, just two weeks after he ordered U.S. forces to attack Caracas and try to seize Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

Trump, who has long desired the Nobel Peace Prize, is currently involved in a Middle East conflict initiated with his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with airstrikes on Iran at the end of February.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the peace prize, clarified after Machado presented her 2025 Nobel medal to Trump that the honor itself “cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others.”

Machado remarked that the military operation to detain Maduro, who is currently held in New York on U.S. drug charges, is “something Venezuelans will never forget.”

She added, “Therefore, I have no regrets” about giving her Nobel medal to Trump.

Having been in hiding before leaving Venezuela in December to attend her Nobel ceremony in Oslo, Machado said she is arranging her return to the country in coordination with Washington.

Later, she addressed thousands of supporters in Madrid, urging them to prepare for their return home.

“All we have done over these 27 years has been to prepare for a moment of reunion and the building of a nation that will be free forever,” she said, referencing the periods under Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez.

Last week, Venezuela’s opposition called for presidential elections.

Machado has yet to announce whether she will run in future elections; she was barred from seeking the presidency in 2024, an election in which Maduro claimed re-election amid allegations of rigging by opposition groups.