Nobel Winner Offers to Give Trump Her Prize After He Rejected Her
Donald Trump might get his Nobel Peace Prize after all.
In a seemingly desperate bid to regain favor with the U.S. president, the 2025 recipient of the prestigious honor—Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado—offered to give her medal to Trump after he announced he would not back her to run the country she’s fought to reclaim.
“Did you at any point offer to give him the Nobel Peace Prize? Did that actually happen? I read that somewhere, I wasn’t sure if it was true,” asked Fox News’s Sean Hannity in a one-on-one interview with Machado late Monday.
“It hasn’t happened yet, but I certainly would love to be able to personally tell him that we—the Venezuelan people … we want to give it to him, share it with him,” Machado said.
She was named the 2025 recipient for her staunch opposition to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, becoming one of the most outspoken opponents to the authoritarian leader. She spent 11 months in hiding for daring to speak out against him, reportedly fearing for her life.
Machado dedicated her prize to Trump in September after the U.S. president unsuccessfully pined and schemed all year to win the award.
But Trump’s sudden capture of Maduro early Saturday has completely unrooted Venezuelan politics. The U.S. invasion—involving hundreds of American troops who stormed Caracas overnight—was apparently all about oil, according to Trump. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world.
The attack followed months of escalating rhetoric between the White House and Venezuela’s leadership, in which the Trump administration repeatedly pinned U.S. fentanyl deaths on Venezuelan drug cartels, despite a resounding lack of evidence.
Later Saturday, Trump said he would not support Machado in her own bid to lead the country, telling reporters at Mar-a-Lago that “it would be very tough for her to be the leader” as she lacked sufficient “respect” in Venezuela.
He instead signaled that he would recognize Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as the face of the country. Rodríguez had also been recognized by Venezuela’s armed forces as its interim leader. She was sworn in on Monday.
In the same Saturday press conference, Trump warned that Rodríguez would pay “a very high price” if she did not “do what’s right” with regard to helping American companies access Venezuela’s oil reserves.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice quietly removed references to a fictional drug cartel led by Nicolás Maduro from its newest indictment of the kidnapped Venezuelan president.
The New York Times reported Monday that the new indictment of Maduro and others on charges related to drug trafficking omitted a crucial element of the original charges: the criminal organization that Maduro supposedly ran, Cartel de los Soles.
The original indictment filed against Maduro in March 2020 in the Southern District of New York described the Cartel de los Soles as a “drug trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking officials” that operated between 1999 and 2020.
“Under the leadership of Maduro Moros and others, the Cartel de Los Soles sought not only to enrich its members and enhance their power, but also to ‘flood’ the United States with cocaine,” the indictment said.
But apparently, Cartel de los Soles isn’t a real organization at all. It’s a slang term invented by the Venezuelan media to describe corruption, according to the Times. The supposed cartel’s inclusion in the original indictment would be as if someone tried Trump for leading “Trumpworld” as a criminal organization.
The original indictment mentions the cartel 32 times, while the new one only mentions it twice, this time describing Cartel de los Soles as a “patronage system run by those at the top.”
The fabrication of Cartel de los Soles must be a relatively new revelation for the Trump administration. In November, the U.S. State Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization led by Maduro.
The new indictment adds to the original by including additional charges of “narco-terrorism,” conspiracy to import cocaine, and gun charges, as well as charges against Maduro’s wife for allegedly accepting bribes to broker trafficking meetings.
A woman was arrested live on camera in Grand Rapids, Michigan, while talking to a local newscast about protesting the U.S. government’s sudden takeover of Venezuela.
Jessica Plichta helped Grand Rapids Opponents of War organize the turnout Saturday, which inspired dozens of locals to march through snowy city streets. But in a bizarre turn of events, Plichta’s decision to exercise her First Amendment rights ended when local authorities handcuffed her on the sidewalk while she was live on air.
“We have to apply pressure at all points that we can, this is not just a foreign issue,” Plichta said before she was arrested. “It’s our tax dollars that are also being used to commit these war crimes.”
She was reportedly arrested for obstructing a roadway and failure to obey a lawful command from an officer, according to 13 ON YOUR SIDE.
What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids? Watch this activist get arrested *mid-interview* for speaking out against U.S. action in........
