President Donald Trump may have inadvertently boosted María Corina Machado’s cause months before the Nobel Committee gave her the Peace Prize he wanted for himself.
The Venezuelan opposition leader was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights in her home country under President Nicolás Maduro, and achieving ”a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
Machado won, having thrown her weight behind opposition hopeful Edmundo González Urrutia in last year’s race—an outcome Washington said he won, even as Maduro claimed victory and held on to power—and she was pushed into hiding amid threats and prosecutions, and barred from public office.
News of Machado’s award has upset Trump after he had lobbied furiously to win it, and his MAGA cronies have taken it as well as expected, with one describing Machado as “a woman who cries nonstop.”
But, in an embarrassing moment they’d all probably rather forget, it has emerged that Trump himself may have helped boost her chances when he paid a gushing tribute to his Nobel Prize rival’s work, and her movement, before he became U.S. president earlier this year.
On Jan. 9, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Venezuelan democracy activist Maria Corina Machado and President-elect Gonzalez are peacefully expressing the voices and the WILL of the Venezuelan people… These freedom fighters should not be harmed, and MUST stay SAFE and ALIVE!”
Almost 10 months to the day, Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
However, Machado—a staunch Maduro critic long embraced by Venezuelan exiles—has praised Trump in kind.
Last month, she acknowledged the 79-year-old’s hard-line posture during a Fox & Friends appearance, calling Maduro the head of a “narco-terrorist” structure and declaring “the time of impunity is over.”
Yet this was not enough to appease Trump’s MAGA faithful, who had backed the president’s agitating for a Nobel Peace Prize—touting his foreign-policy deals as proof he deserves it and complaining he’s been “treated very unfairly” by the committee.
Trump’s communications chief, Steven Cheung, said that the committee had chosen “politics over peace.”
He wrote on X: “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will.”
Trump’s friend, hard-right activist Laura Loomer, added: “Imagine thinking a woman who cries nonstop about @NicolasMaduro has done more for the world than President Trump. 🙄 What an absolute joke. Everyone knows President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. More affirmative action nonsense.”
Katie Miller, wife of Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller, also described Machado’s win as “POLITICS OVER PEACE.”
Announcing the prize in Oslo, committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes lauded Machado as “a brave and committed champion of peace,” and she is due to receive the medal on Dec. 10.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
