WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump said on Friday (Oct 10) that Nobel Prize winner Maria Corina Machado called him and said she accepted the prize in his honour, after the White House said earlier in the day that the Nobel Committee had chosen “politics over peace.”
The White House had criticised the Nobel Committee’s decision to grant the peace prize to the Venezuelan opposition leader instead of Trump, who aggressively lobbied for the award and touted his role in brokering international ceasefire deals.
“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung said in a post on X.
“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”
Asked about the Nobel on Friday evening, Trump did not directly criticise the Committee’s decision, but he credited himself for resolving several wars and said Machado might have given him the award if he had asked.
“The person who actually got the Nobel Prize called today, called me, and said, ‘I’m accepting this in honour of you, because you really deserved it,'” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“It’s 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.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee granted the annual award to Machado, citing “courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist” authoritarian leadership.
Trump had campaigned for the prize, and just this week announced a ceasefire and hostage deal to end the war in Gaza.
Trump says he has ended eight wars since taking office and that he deserves the peace prize, though recently he had said he expected to be passed over.
“Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing,” Trump told top US military leaders last month.
He said it would be a “big insult” to the United States if he didn’t get it.
Nominations for the Nobel must have been made before Jan 31 to be valid for this year’s prize. Trump returned to the White House for his second term in office on Jan 20.
Trump acknowledged on Friday the committee’s decision in practice focused on 2024 when he had been campaigning for president, but he suggested his contributions to peace were so great that they should have given him the prize anyway.
“I was running for office in ’24. But there are those who say we did so much that they should have done it.”
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Gram Slattery; Editing by Sharon Singleton, Doina Chiacu, Ross Colvin, Andrea Ricci and Tom Hogue)
