Nobel Winner Offers Award to Trump After Historic Fall of Dictator Maduro

President Donald Trump’s dramatic takedown of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro is still rippling worldwide, but the most surprising reaction didn’t come from diplomats or world leaders. It came from Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, long considered the moral backbone of Venezuela’s resistance movement.

Machado stunned viewers during a Fox News appearance on January 5 when she said she would “love” to personally give her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump, calling the U.S. president “the reason Maduro finally fell.”

“Let me be very clear: as soon as I learned that we had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I dedicated to Trump because I knew at that point, he deserved it,” Machado told Hannity. “And lot of people, most people said it was impossible to achieve what he has just done on Saturday, January 3rd. And so, I believe he deserved it.”

Her comments marked a dramatic turn in Venezuelan politics — and a major personal victory for Trump, who has publicly argued for years that he deserved a Nobel Prize.

Machado won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her leadership in challenging Maduro’s authoritarian regime. Her selection came after two years of living in hiding, banned from public life by Maduro’s security forces.

Even before the award ceremony in Oslo, her team had to send a quiet warning to the White House, asking U.S. forces not to “blow up” their boat as they crossed waters routinely hit during Trump’s anti-cartel airstrikes in the Caribbean.

“It was insane,” a Machado aide told a local Venezuelan outlet. “We were dodging drug routes and war zones just to pick up her Peace Prize.”

But Machado insisted on going herself. She said every Venezuelan who had “stood up to tyranny” deserved to see her bring the medal home.

After winning another contested election in 2024, Maduro refused to step down, driving Venezuela deeper into collapse. Opposition president-elect Edmundo González fled into exile in Spain. Machado went underground.

Under Trump’s second-term crackdown on hostile regimes in the Western Hemisphere, Maduro’s capture on January 3 became one of the administration’s signature foreign policy wins.

“This is a huge step for humanity,” Machado told Hannity. “And it is because the United States — under President Trump — finally acted.”

She added that Venezuelans view Trump as the one leader capable of restoring democratic rule in Caracas.

Though she hasn’t spoken directly with Trump since October 10 — the day her Nobel victory was announced — Machado said she hopes to deliver the medal personally.

“It hasn’t happened yet,” she said. “But I would certainly love to tell him face-to-face that the Venezuelan people want to give this to him and share it with him.”

Machado called the award “a prize of the Venezuelan people,” insisting they see Trump as their liberator more than any international committee.

Despite the flattery, Trump dismissed the idea that Machado could run Venezuela after Maduro’s fall.

“She’s a very nice woman,” he said on January 3, “but she doesn’t have the respect within the country. It would be very tough.”

That comment sparked debate. Some analysts viewed Trump’s words as blunt realism. Others saw political strategy.

Mark Montgomery of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told one outlet the president wasn’t being petty.

“Put him on a lie detector — he probably isn’t a big fan because she stole his Nobel Prize,” Montgomery joked. “If Trump really wants one, he’ll push hard for installing democracy in Venezuela over the next month.”

As 2026 begins, Venezuela stands at a crossroads. Maduro is finally behind bars. The opposition is fractured but newly energized. And for the first time in years, Washington is shaping the direction of the region.

Machado’s jaw-dropping offer only adds fuel to a growing political question:

Will Donald Trump become the first U.S. president to win a Nobel Peace Prize after someone else wins it first?