(AFP) – Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said Thursday she “presented” her Nobel Peace Prize medal to US President Donald Trump, who has openly coveted the award that the Nobel committee says cannot be transferred.
“I presented the president of the United States the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize,” Machado told reporters outside the US Capitol following her White House meeting with Trump. Machado, whom Trump had earlier dismissed as unfit to lead Venezuela, did not clarify if Trump kept it.
She drew a comparison to the Marquis de Lafayette, the French officer who helped the United States in the Revolutionary War against Britain, saying he handed a medal with the image of first US president George Washington to Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan who led a wave of successful independence fights against Spain.
“Two hundred years in history, the people of Bolivar are giving back to the heir of Washington a medal — in this case, the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize as a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom,” she said.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee earlier wrote in a statement on X that the prestigious prize “cannot be revoked, shared or transferred to others” and that the name of the winner “stands for all time” even if the medal physically changes hands.
Trump — who has relished military action and on Thursday was threatening greater force against protesters in the US state of Minnesota — has loudly said he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and was dismissive of Machado when she won it.
Trump on January 3 ordered a deadly military raid into oil-rich Venezuela that removed Nicolas Maduro, the leftist president long described as illegitimate by the United States and several other countries due to elections riddled with reported irregularities.
But after the operation, Trump said that Machado — whose opposition forces were considered by Washington to have won the last election — does not command the “respect” to lead Venezuela.
Machado offered a positive account of their closed-door conversation, saying, “We are counting on President Trump for freedom in Venezuela.”
“President Trump knows the situation in Venezuela; he cares about how the people of Venezuela are suffering,” she said.
She said she told him that Venezuelans “want to live with freedom, with dignity, with justice, we want our children back home, and for that to happen, there has to be democracy in Venezuela.”
Trump has previously vowed to work not with Machado but with Maduro’s vice president turned interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, by threatening her with force if she does not comply on key US demands starting with benefitting US oil firms.
© 2024 AFP
