Venezuelan Opposition Leader Tells Hannity She’d ‘Certainly Love’ to ‘Personally’ Give Trump Her Nobel Peace Prize

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado told Fox News host Sean Hannity that she’d love to personally give her Nobel Peace Prize to President Donald Trump — after news reports that Trump had passed over supporting her as interim leader because she hadn’t originally insisted he be given the prize.

Over the weekend, the president ordered air strikes in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital city, leading to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

The strikes sparked loud criticism for multiple reasons, chiefly because Trump had not sought authorization from Congress beforehand, the complicated nature of attempting to force regime change, and because of his pardon in December for Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of drug trafficking. Others have cited Maduro’s brutal oppression of his own people and how he seized power for a third term in July 2024 despite election results showing opposition leader Edmundo González had won. (Maduro’s government had barred Machado from running.)

In a press conference the day after the air strikes and capture of Maduro, Trump had publicly torpedoed the idea of Machado as an interim replacement, saying it would be “very tough for her to be the leader” and claiming she “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.”

Members of the Venezuelan opposition were stunned by Trump’s blunt rejection of Machado, reported The Washington Post. The Post’s report added that Machado’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize itself was viewed as the “ultimate sin” by a president who has loudly coveted it, and her effusive praise for Trump at the time was inadequate to satisfy him.

“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” the Post’s source said.

Machado appeared on Monday’s episode of Hannity to discuss the latest developments in Venezuela, and the show’s host kicked off the segment by diving straight into the issue of succession.

“Following the capture of Maduro over the weekend, the end of his horrific regime, the question remains, who will succeed the brutal dictator and bring much-needed change and freedom to the country?” said Hannity before running through a brief synopsis of Machado’s record, having “rose to prominence after winning the independently-run opposition presidential primary, with more than 92% of the vote, before Maduro then dictated that she be taken off the ballot.”

Machado had also dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize “to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause,” Hannity noted, and “has thanked President Trump for his support, and commended his resolve to help the people of Venezuela many times, publicly, on X and elsewhere.”

Machado began by thanking Hannity and Fox News for the “incredible support you have given to us throughout all this long journey for the cause of democracy for our people in Venezuela.”

After discussing how Maduro had banned her from the ballot and the opposition had organized to support González and “defeated Maduro by a landslide — it was incredible, under extreme conditions, unfair conditions,” Hannity asked her about dedicating her Nobel Prize to Trump.

“It’s not a very usual, people will dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize to the leader of a different country and say publicly, he deserves this more than I do,” said Hannity. “But you did that.”

“Let me be very clear,” Machado said, “as soon as I learned that we had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I dedicated to Trump because I knew at that point, he deserved it. And lot of people, most people said it was impossible to achieve what he has just done on Saturday, January 3rd. And so, I believe he deserved it.”

Trump had “proven to the world what he means,” Machado continued, because “January 3rd will go down in history as the day justice defeated tyranny,” as a “milestone” that was “a huge step” for the Venezuelan people, and for “humanity, freedom, and human dignity.”

Hannity asked if she had spoken to Trump, and she replied that she had on October 10, the day the Nobel prizes were announced but not since then, immediately adding that she was so “grateful” for Trump’s “courageous vision” and “historical actions he has taken against these narco-terrorists, to start dismantling the structure and bringing Maduro to justice, which means that 30 million Venezuelans are now closer to freedom, but also the United States of America is a safer country nowadays.”

“Did you at any point offer to give him the Nobel Peace Prize? Did that actually happen?” Hannity asked. “I had read that somewhere. Wasn’t sure if it was true.”

“Well, it hasn’t happened yet,” said Machado. “But I would certainly love to be able to personally tell him that we believe — the Venezuelan people, because this is a prize of the Venezuelan people — certainly want to give it to him and share it with him.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News.