Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said she presented her medal to President Trump during their meeting in the White House. Machado previously dedicated her award to Trump. ‘Nobel Peace Prize Winner Maria Corina Machado Dedicates Award To Donald Trump’ pic.twitter.com/58OlIb80aC — The White House (@WhiteHouse) October 10, 2025 USA TODAY has more: Machado described the meeting to reporters later in the day. She did not say whether Trump accepted the medal. After the American military bombed the capital city of Caracas on Jan. 3, capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Trump did not endorse Machado to take the dictator’s place. Instead, Delcy Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president, was sworn in as the country’s interim president. Trump openly lobbied to be awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, but the honor was instead given to Machado. Ahead of the meeting, the Nobel Institute clarified in a statement that the “Nobel Prize can neither be revoked, shared, nor transferred to others. Once the announcement has been made, the decision stands for all time.” Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado will not be able to hand over her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to President Donald Trump, despite recent suggestions she has made about doing so, the Norwegian Nobel Institute said. pic.twitter.com/P8dmYwk7qi — USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 11, 2026 According to The Guardian, Machado told reporters she “presented” the medal to Trump during a private meeting. Watch Machado exit the White House after the meeting: #AHORA Salida de @MariaCorinaYA de la Casa Blanca tras reunión con el presidente Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/eRkTYLKpgH — Comando ConVzla (@ConVzlaComando) January 15, 2026 Machado also met with Republican and Democratic senators at the U.S. Capitol. María Corina Machado (@MariaCorinaYA) en reunión con senadores republicanos y demócratas en el Capitolio de los Estados Unidos. pic.twitter.com/5nQJDmiOzP — Vocería Oficial de Venezuela (@voceriavzla) January 15, 2026 The Guardian shared further: Speaking to reporters, Machado compared handing her medal to Trump to how, in 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette sent a gold medal featuring an image of George Washington to the South American independence hero Simón Bolívar. Machado called Lafayette’s gift “a sign of the brotherhood between the people of the US and the people of Venezuela in their fight for freedom against tyranny”. Trump’s decision not to back Machado after removing Maduro was reportedly the consequence of curdling relations between her and members of Trump’s team, as well as concerns her movement would be unable to control the security situation in Venezuela. The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday: “The president’s assessment was based on realities on the ground. It was a realistic assessment based on what the president was reading and hearing from his national security team. At this moment in time his opinion on that matter has not changed.” Machado is not the first Nobel laureate to divest themselves of the award. After winning the 1954 Nobel prize in literature, Ernest Hemingway entrusted his medal to the Catholic Church in Cuba – where it was briefly stolen from a sanctuary in 1986 before Raúl Castro ordered its return. In 2022, the Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov auctioned his medal to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees. Leon Lederman, who won the 1988 Nobel prize for physics, sold his after it had spent 20 years “sitting on a shelf somewhere”. But the Venezuelan politician appears to be the first person to give away her medal for such explicitly political reasons.