Big surprise – the Nobel Peace Prize didn’t go this year to that Donald Trump guy who is out there bombing fishing boats in international waters and has his goons disappearing law-abiding people off the streets in his own country.
“In the past year, Miss Machado has been forced to live in hiding. Despite serious threats against her life, she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions. When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognize courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the chair of the Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, said on Friday of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize honoree, María Corina Machado, the leader of the opposition party in Venezuela.
Machado, 58, who rose to prominence in 2004 as a leader of the effort to recall Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, was nominated as the unity opposition candidate to challenge the latest Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro, in the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, but she was barred from running on what the European Parliament called “arbitrary and politically fabricated” fraud charges.
The second unity candidate to replace her on the ballot, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, is believed by many to have won the election by a wide margin, but the Maduro regime claimed and then certified its “victory,” and Machado, Public Enemy #1, went into hiding after the election, citing fears for her life.
Earlier this year, she was the subject of an attempted arrest and kidnapping by Maduro forces after making a public appearance in Caracas.
“She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” the Nobel Committee said in a statement announcing its selection.
“As the leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado is one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times,” the committee said.
Trump’s Nobel case reads more like that of Maduro – bombing fishing boats in international waters doesn’t make you a peacenik; neither does authorizing secret police to round up the opposition, and ordering your prosecutors to indict political opponents on made-up charges.
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Trump, trying to make his case fo the Peace Prize, has repeatedly claimed to have ended numerous wars since being returned to the White House in January – anywhere from seven to 10, depending on the day, and his memory.
The Hail Mary that he threw this week, with the interim cease fire in Gaza that has Hamas agreeing to return hostages from the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, ahead of negotiations to end the two-year war that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, amid widespread famine that has been a policy of the Israeli government, could very well be a factor in the 2026 Nobel voting, if things work out as envisioned.
Too early to tell there – too many moving parts to put a lot of stock into the 20-point peace plan proposed by the Trump administration, with so many off-ramps that, hey, if it ends up ending the hostilities, give the guy at least serious consideration, right?
But even then, it would be hard to give a Nobel Peace Prize who, as he claims to be ending wars, is starting new ones, while also using his military on his nation’s own citizens, as is the case with Trump ordering troops to a number of Democrat-led cities nationwide.
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Trump has yet to comment publicly on the snub, but his spokesman, Steven Cheung, went scorched-earth on the Nobel Committee on his behalf.
“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives,” Cheung said in a statement posted on Twitter. “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. The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.
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Chris Graham
