U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday (October 10) that Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado called him after being awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, Reuters reports.
According to Trump. Machado told him she was "accepting this in honor of you because you really deserved it."
"The person who actually got the Nobel Prize called today, called me and said, I'm accepting this in honor of you because you really deserved it. A very nice thing to do. I didn't say then give it to me though. I think she might have. She was very nice. And I've been you know, I've been helping her along the way. They've they need a lot of help in Venezuela. It's a basic disaster. So, and you could also say it was given out for 24 and I was running for office in 24. You know all of the transactions that we did in terms of closing. But there are those that say we did so much that they should have done it. But I don't take, I'm happy because I saved millions of lives," Trump said.
Machado, a 58-year-old industrial engineer who lives in hiding, was blocked in 2024 by Venezuela's courts from running for president and thus challenging President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in power since 2013.
She later said, in an X post in English: "I dedicate the prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!"
Trump is a fierce critic of Maduro and the U.S. is one of a number of countries that does not recognize his government's legitimacy.
The White House had earlier criticized the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to focus on Venezuela just days after Trump announced a breakthrough in talks to halt the fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
