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.”
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