Venezuelan opposition activist wins Nobel Peace Prize after Trump-fuelled speculation
By The Associated Press
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, winning recognition as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”
The former opposition presidential candidate was lauded for being a “key, unifying figure” in the once deeply divided opposition to President Nicolas Maduro’s government, said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee.
“In the past year, Ms. Machado has been forced to live in hiding,” Watne Frydnes said. Despite serious threats against her life, she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions. When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognize courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist.”
Machado says she’s humbled and grateful
Machado’s ally, Edmundo Gonzalez, who lives in exile in Spain, celebrated the Nobel award as a “very well-deserved recognition” of her fight and that of Venezuelans for freedom and democracy. He posted a short video on X of himself speaking by phone with Machado.
“I am in shock,” she said, adding, “I cannot believe it.”
“This is something that the Venezuelan people deserve,” Machado said in a call with the Norwegian Nobel Institute. “I am just part of a huge movement. … I’m humbled, I’m grateful and I’m honored not only by this recognition, but I’m honored to be part of what’s going on in Venezuela today.”
“I believe that we are very close to achieving, finally, freedom for our country and peace for the region,” she said, adding that “even though we face the most brutal violence, our society has resisted” and insisted on struggling by peaceful means. “I believe that the world will now understand how urgent it is to finally, you know, succeed.”
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado
Crackdown on dissent
Maduro’s government has routinely targeted its real or perceived opponents.
Machado, who turned 58 this week, was set to run against Maduro in last year’s presidential election, but the government disqualified her. Gonzalez, who had never run for office before, took her place. The lead-up to the election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations.
The crackdown on dissent only increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared him the winner despite credible evidence to the contrary.
The election results announced by the Electoral Council sparked protests across the country to which the government responded with force that ended with more than 20 people dead. They also prompted an end to diplomatic relations between Venezuela and various foreign countries, including Argentina.
Machado went into hiding and has not been seen in public since January. A Venezuelan court issued an arrest warrant for Gonzalez over the publication of election results. He went into exile in Spain and was granted asylum.
More than 800 people are in prison in Venezuela for political reasons, according to the human rights advocacy group Foro Penal. Among them is Gonzalez’s son-in-law, Rafael Tudares, who was detained in January.
Dozens of those prisoners actively participated in Machado’s efforts last year. Some of her closest collaborators, including her campaign manager, avoided prison by sheltering for more than a year at a diplomatic compound in Caracas. They remained there until May, when they fled to the U.S.
Early Friday in Caracas, some people heading to work expressed disbelief at the news of Machado’s win.
“I don’t know what can be done to improve the situation, but she deserves it,” said Sandra Martinez, 32, as she waited at a bus stop. “She’s a great woman.”
There was no immediate reaction from Maduro’s government.
Support for Machado and the opposition in general has decreased since the July 2024 election — particularly since January, when Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term and disappointment set in.
Machado was included in Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in April. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote her entry, in which he described her as “the Venezuelan Iron Lady” and “the personification of resilience, tenacity, and patriotism.”
Machado becomes the 20th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, of the 112 individuals who have been honoured.
Speculation about Trump’s Nobel chances
There had been persistent speculation ahead of the announcement about the possibility of the prize going to U.S. President Donald Trump, fueled in part by the president himself and amplified by this week’s approval of his plan for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Asked about lobbying for and by Trump, Watne Frydnes said: “I think this committee has seen any type of campaign, media attention. We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what for them leads to peace.
“This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates, and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”
White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a post on X Friday morning that “President Trump will continue making peace deals around the world, ending wars, and saving lives.” He added that “the Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”
The peace prize is the only one of the annual Nobel prizes to be awarded in Oslo, Norway.
Four of the other prizes have already been awarded in the Swedish capital, Stockholm this week — in medicine on Monday, physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The winner of the prize in economics will be announced on Monday.
Trump wants a Nobel Prize. He’ll learn Friday if his campaign paid off
By Washington Post
Of all the golden glories that Donald Trump has accumulated – the statues, sneakers, even a golden pager – one gleaming medallion has eluded the 79-year-old president: the Nobel Peace Prize.
The annual award, set to be announced Friday, has occupied Trump for months, along with a recurring complaint that he’ll be overlooked despite his global peacemaking efforts.
“We settled seven wars. We’re close to settling an eighth. And I think we’ll end up settling the Russia situation, which is horrible,” Trump said Wednesday, when asked whether he expected to claim the prize when the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee steps solemnly up to a microphone in his grand Oslo headquarters. “I don’t think anybody in history settled that many. But perhaps they’ll find a reason not to give it to me.”
If he doesn’t win, Trump said last week, “it’ll be a big insult to our country, I will tell you that.”
“I don’t want it. I want the country to get it,” Trump added, touting the many conflicts he says he has resolved in his first months in office and his efforts to broker peace in the Middle East.
Trump maintains he is not politicking for the prize, which he has mentioned publicly every few weeks since reclaiming the Oval Office – a habit people familiar with the award warned could hurt his chances. But his naked hunger to win has shifted foreign diplomacy. It may have helped spur Hamas and Israeli officials to strike a bargain this week, one former top Israeli negotiator said, in hopes of being able to announce a buzzer-beating peace after two years of war so that Trump can take home the gold.
The “Friday morning deadline is shaping the timeline, the announcement of the Nobel Committee in Oslo,” Col. Doron Hadar, a reservist officer who until last year commanded the Israel Defense Forces’ negotiation unit, said before Trump announced a Gaza ceasefire deal Wednesday. “Everyone understands this timeline, and that’s why I believe that by [Thursday] evening, there will already be a declaration that the sides have reached agreements.”
Trump’s quest to match an honor handed to then-President Barack Obama has been noted by lawmakers and world leaders eager to curry favor. Several have nominated him for the prize. Others, including Trump’s deputies and even a pharmaceutical company CEO, have publicly campaigned for his victory.
And Trump, eager to boost his odds, phoned an influential Norwegian friend, former NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, to float the topic as Stoltenberg, now Norway’s finance minister, walked along an Oslo street this summer, according to two officials familiar with the call. Like others interviewed for this article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about what some fear could be a sticky diplomatic situation should Trump not win the prize.
Pakistan’s government kicked Trump a nomination in June. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered one up in July. Cambodia’s came in August. Taiwan, meanwhile, dangled Nobel bait this week, as President Lai Ching-te told “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show” that if Trump persuades Chinese President Xi Jinping to permanently abandon military designs on Taiwan, the U.S. leader “would undoubtedly” win the prize.
Trump’s not-a-campaign campaign has little precedent in the subdued world of Nobel peace picks, where five Norwegians appointed by their country’s parliament meet in conclave for months of studious deliberation. Winners almost never campaign publicly – and few lobby privately, according to people familiar with Nobel history. His public interest in the award could backfire, according to a person familiar with the operations of the prize.
“The pressure from Trump is rather extraordinary and comes across not least as remarkably self-centered. That rhetoric and his whole approach must be said to collide quite dramatically with the traditions of the prize, even if that in itself may not be disqualifying,” the person said.
“It’s unprecedented, and it’s very unusual,” said Nina Graeger, the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, who compiles an annual shortlist of possible winners that often successfully identifies a candidate. This year, Trump isn’t on the list – although a number of organizations with which he has clashed are.
The International Criminal Court, The Hague-based body that Trump placed sanctions on in February because of its pursuit of Israeli leaders over their conduct in Gaza, is on the shortlist. So is the Committee to Protect Journalists, a watchdog for global press freedom that has raised concerns about Trump’s threats to reporters inside the United States.
“The Peace Prize sends a very strong message to the world, and it’s a very important political symbol,” Graeger said.
She said that if Trump actually does deliver “sustainable peace” in Gaza, “if this all goes the way in which we all hope it will go, the committee would consider him for the peace prize, I’m quite sure. They would also, however, look at whatever else he’s doing in the world, but at least they would have to consider him.”
This year, she said, “I don’t find it likely,” not least because the cutoff for nominations is Jan. 31 – although that technical challenge didn’t hold Obama back from winning the prize in 2009, his first year in office, a decision many in the Nobel world now say was a mistake.
Trump has remarked on the standard applied to his predecessor.
“If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds,” Trump said in remarks in October 2024, when he was still on the campaign trail and touting his first-term efforts to broker peace in the Middle East.
A White House spokeswoman said Trump’s efforts to end global conflicts are not about awards. “While the President deserves the Nobel Peace Prize many times over, he doesn’t care about recognition – only saving lives,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement.
Trump has said he resolved seven conflicts, including between India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda (the list does not include Israel and Hamas). The president in some cases has exaggerated the depth of the conflict and in others overstated the degree to which the conflict is over. In at least one case, involving Serbia and Kosovo, fighting ended decades ago and officials say it wasn’t about to start again. Congo’s leaders say the fighting with Rwanda continues. White House officials say the president is proud of his record.
Others who need to curry favor with Trump have zeroed in on the Nobel as a way to do so, including Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, who lauded Trump for his coronavirus vaccine program on an investor call in April.
“I told him that he should have received the Nobel Prize” and that it was unfair he didn’t, Bourla said.
Some advocates say the president’s contributions are noble, and Nobel-worthy.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum held a mock Nobel Prize ceremony outside the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv last month, praising Trump for his efforts to return dozens of hostages taken by Hamas and end the war in Gaza. The group this week renewed its call for Trump to receive a Nobel Peace Prize – before he announced the first phase of a peace deal.
“Throughout this entire ordeal, we have believed that President Trump deserves this recognition,” the group said in a statement to The Washington Post, adding that the idea came from family members affected by the hostage crisis and that it was not prompted by the White House. “His personal commitment has given us hope after two years of darkness.”
Others have interjected the global prize into domestic politics. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), the chairman of the Senate’s health committee, has seized on the idea in social media posts, Senate hearings and even a National Review essay last month, insisting that Trump deserves a peace prize for his Operation Warp Speed initiative to accelerate coronavirus vaccine development in 2020.
Cassidy’s efforts reflect an effort to draw a distinction between Trump’s work to advance coronavirus vaccines and his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has claimed that Operation Warp Speed helped produce “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”
Kennedy and Mehmet Oz, who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, have also said that Trump deserves a Nobel for his coronavirus vaccine work.
Some Republicans are already making plans to recognize Trump if he is passed over for a Nobel Prize this week. Rep. Claudia Tenney (New York), who has said that Trump deserves a Nobel for his work on the Abraham Accords, a set of treaties that normalized relationships between Israel and several Arab countries, has pledged to nominate him for a third time.
Cassidy, meanwhile, is making plans to honor Trump for his coronavirus work.
“President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed was a historic success that saved millions of lives,” the senator told The Post. “I can’t think of anyone more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize, and I’m proud to be nominating him.”
