The US president called the gift a ‘wonderful gesture of mutual respect’ but made no mention of the opposition leader’s possible involvement in the Venezuelan transition. A gold-plated medal, weighing 196 grams and measuring 6.6 centimeters in diameter, was the star of the highly anticipated meeting between María Corina Machado and Donald Trump. As she had previously announced, the Venezuelan opposition leader presented her Nobel Peace Prize to the U.S. president in recognition of his assistance in Venezuela. It was the genuine article, not a replica. The gesture was intended to curry favor with the Republican president, who had openly acknowledged his desire to receive the award and who, just the day before, had praised Machado’s main adversary, Venezuela’s acting president Delcy Rodríguez. Trump confirmed that he had accepted the gift, which he described as “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”
I presented the Nobel Peace Prize medal to the President of the United States,” Machado confirmed in a chaotic statement to the media outside the Capitol. For his part, Trump, who the day before had heaped praise on Rodríguez, made no mention of the content of his conversation with Machado, nor of the possibility that the opposition leader might play a role in Venezuela’s transition. He didn’t even refer to her as the leader of the opposition, even though his own government recognizes the movement led by Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner of the July 2024 elections.
Apparently in response to the anticipation surrounding the meeting between Trump and Machado, the Nobel Committee reminded everyone on social media this Thursday that the prize “cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others,” although the medal’s owner can do more or less as they wish with it. They can give it away, leave it to their heirs, or even auction it off. A well-known example is that of Dmitri Muratov’s medal, which was auctioned for over $100 million to support refugees from the war in Ukraine. But the Committee leaves no room for doubt: a medal can change hands, but the title of Nobel Peace Prize winner cannot.
Machado, who in November escaped from her hiding place in Venezuela to travel to Oslo to receive the award, had declared in an interview with Fox News television host Sean Hannity that she would offer to share the award.
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