The woman who beat Donald Trump to the Nobel Peace Prize had to beg the White House not to blow her up on her way to collect the award.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado spent more than two months plotting her journey to Oslo to collect the prestigious peace prize after being barred from leaving the country by President Nicolas Maduro’s regime.
Despite narrowly missing the official ceremony, Machado, who has spent over a year in hiding after she was banned from standing against Maduro in last year’s presidential election, eventually appeared to collect her award on Wednesday and thanked those who had “risked their lives” helping her leave the country.
Machado’s clandestine journey to Norway was a perilous one, The Wall Street Journal reports. Assisted by two supporters, the 58-year-old donned a wig and disguise as she made her way through 10 military checkpoints while en route to a small fishing village on the Venezuelan coast.
Upon arrival, she boarded a nondescript wooden fishing skiff and traversed the Caribbean Sea to nearby Curacao, traveling through the same body of water that had seen around 20 vessels sunk by U.S. airstrikes in the last three months, killing around 80 people.
Before setting sail, the group made a crucial call to the White House, during which they implored the Trump administration not to sink the boat.
“We coordinated that she was going to leave by a specific area so that they would not blow up the boat,” a person close to the operation told the WSJ.
Although the extent of their involvement remains unclear, government sources confirmed that the Trump administration was aware of Machado’s journey.
At the time of her crossing, the Navy dispatched two F-18 fighter jets into the Gulf of Venezuela, where they flew circles around her route for about 40 minutes—the closest incursion into Venezuelan airspace the military has made since tensions between the two nations escalated in September.
After arriving in Curacao, Machado later made contact with a private contractor supplied by the Trump administration who specializes in extractions, the WSJ reports. She then boarded a private jet bound for Bangor, Maine, before catching a connecting flight to Oslo shortly thereafter, arriving in Norway on Wednesday evening.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House, Pentagon, and U.S. Navy for further comment.
Machado’s daring escape was such a closely guarded secret that not even the Nobel Institute knew her location, with her daughter Ana Corina Sosa Machado instead accepting the award in her absence and reciting a speech written by her mother.
The decision to award Machado, a right-wing, free-market conservative who has called on Trump to “liberate” her country, has been a controversial one. Upon receiving the award in October, she dedicated her victory to “the people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support for our cause!”
When asked about her victory on Wednesday and whether the U.S. would provide assistance to Machado if she were arrested, Trump responded, “Arrested by who? The Nobel Prize committee?
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “She was very gracious. She said I should have gotten the Nobel Prize.
Trump, who has been highly vocal about his desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize, added, “I’m doing this to save lives. I’m not doing it for any other reason. But if she got arrested, I wouldn’t be happy with that.”
While the president’s highly coveted Nobel Prize continues to elude him, Trump was nonetheless the recipient of the hastily assembled “FIFA Peace Prize” on Monday, which was awarded to him ahead of the 2026 World Cup Draw on Friday. Trump said receiving the phony peace prize was “one of the great honors of my life.”
