U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado had called him to say she was accepting the award in his honour, following earlier remarks from the White House accusing the Nobel Committee of choosing “politics over peace.”
The White House had criticised the committee’s decision to award the prize to the Venezuelan opposition leader rather than to Trump, who had campaigned strongly for the accolade and frequently highlighted his role in brokering international ceasefire agreements.
“President Trump will continue to make peace deals, end conflicts, and save lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains through sheer willpower,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung wrote on X.
“The Nobel Committee has shown once again that it values politics over peace,” he added.
Speaking later on Friday, Trump refrained from directly criticising the decision but claimed credit for resolving several conflicts, suggesting Machado might have handed him the award if he had asked.
“The person who actually received the Nobel Prize called me today and said, ‘I’m accepting this in your honour because you truly deserved it,’” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It was a lovely gesture. I didn’t say, ‘Then give it to me,’ although I think she might have done so. She was very kind.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the prize was awarded to Machado as one of the “courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist” authoritarian rule.
Trump had publicly sought the prize and, earlier this week, announced a ceasefire and hostage agreement aimed at ending the conflict in Gaza.
He has claimed credit for ending eight wars since taking office and insists he merits the peace prize, though he had recently acknowledged that he was unlikely to receive it.
“Will I get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’ll give it to someone who’s done nothing at all,” Trump reportedly told senior U.S. military officials last month, adding that it would be a “major insult” to the United States if he were overlooked.
Nominations for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize closed on 31 January. Trump returned to the White House for his second term on 20 January.
On Friday, he conceded that the committee’s decision effectively recognised achievements from 2024, when he was campaigning for re-election, but argued that his record on peace should have earned him the prize regardless.
“I was running for office in ’24,” he said. “But many people say we did so much that they should have given it to us anyway.”
Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has dismissed media reports that CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Moscow ear...
A glacial collapse that triggered catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday has killed at least 270 people, with more than 1,...
Uzbekistan's region of Karakalpakstan is developing three cryptocurrency mining facilities and three data c...
Oil prices fell after the U.S. expanded economic sanctions on Iran, as Tehran vowed to retaliate and warned it had tools to respond, raising concerns over potential disruption to regional oil supplies.
Rescuers in Nepal used helicopters on Thursday to scour for hundreds still missing after a wall of mud and rock collapsed into a river on the Himalayan border with China's Tibet, sending catastrophic floods through towns and valleys, killing 162 people.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told allied foreign ministers Washington will focus on sanctions and other pressure on Iran “for the time being”, Axios reports. Meanwhile, Iran and Oman have resumed talks on a temporary shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.
Kyiv has recently received a small number of U.S.-made Patriot interceptors capable of downing Russian ballistic missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said. It comes as Britain and France pledged stronger military support for Ukraine.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has called for greater economic cooperation among Muslim countries, saying their combined economic weight remains disproportionately small compared with their population, strategic location and resources.
A glacial collapse that triggered catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday has killed at least 270 people, with more than 1,000 still missing. Here are some of the most devastating glacier-related disasters recorded around the world:
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says 3.7 million children across Afghanistan are suffering from acute wasting, a dangerous form of malnutrition, including around one million with severe acute malnutrition, as hospitals and aid services face rising demand and funding shortages.
Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has dismissed media reports that CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Moscow earlier this week to warn Russia against attacking NATO, dismissing them as "scare stories," which had nothing to do with reality.
Icelanders will vote on Saturday, 29 August, on whether to resume negotiations with the European Union, in a referendum that could reopen the country’s long-debated membership question.
Israel is set to return the body of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy more than nine months after he was killed by Israeli forces and his remains were placed in Israeli custody, according to a Palestinian campaign seeking the return of bodies.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment