Washington: US President Donald Trump responded Friday to not successful this 12 months’s Nobel Peace Prize, saying he had assisted the awardee, Venezuelan opposition chief María Corina Machado, on a number of events.
Trump claimed Machado referred to as him after receiving the prize, telling him she accepted it “in honour of you since you actually deserved it.” He added, “I didn’t say, ‘Give it to me,’ although. I believe she may need… I’ve been serving to her alongside the way in which. They wanted numerous assist in Venezuela in the course of the catastrophe. I’m pleased as a result of I saved tens of millions of lives…”
Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her work selling democratic rights in Venezuela and her efforts towards a peaceable transition from dictatorship to democracy.
Trump, who had hoped to win the prize for his claims of serving to “finish seven wars,” additionally tied the battle in Ukraine to his broader peacemaking document whereas talking to reporters on the White Home.
“I stated, ‘Effectively, what in regards to the seven others? I ought to get a Nobel Prize for every one’. So that they stated, ‘however in case you cease Russia and Ukraine, sir, you need to be capable to get the Nobel’. I stated I finished seven wars. That is one warfare, and that is an enormous one,” he informed the gathering, itemizing conflicts he stated have been halted underneath his management, together with “Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Serbia, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Rwanda and the Congo.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday additionally stated that Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. In a publish on X, he wrote, “Give @realDonaldTrump the Nobel Peace Prize – he deserves it!”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised María Corina Machado as a “courageous and dedicated champion of peace,” saying the Nobel Peace Prize honors a “girl who retains the flame of democracy alive amid rising darkness.”
“Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace. Nonetheless, we stay in a world the place democracy is in retreat, the place increasingly authoritarian regimes are difficult norms and resorting to violence. Machado has spent years working for the liberty of the Venezuelan individuals,” the Committee stated.
“The Venezuelan regime’s inflexible maintain on energy and its repression of the inhabitants usually are not distinctive on this planet. We see the identical traits globally: rule of regulation abused by these in management, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed in direction of authoritarian rule and militarisation. In 2024, extra elections have been held than ever earlier than, however fewer and fewer are free and honest,” the Nobel Committee stated.
“Peace laureate Maria Corina Machado has proven that the instruments of democracy are additionally the instruments of peace. She embodies the hope of a distinct future, one the place the basic rights of residents are protected, and their voices are heard,” it stated.
The choice committee said that María Corina Machado fulfills all three standards outlined in Alfred Nobel’s will for selecting a Nobel Peace Prize winner.