Winner Machado accepted it ‘in my honour’: Trump says he ‘deserved’ Nobel Peace Prize

US President Donald Trump on Friday said Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, had accepted the award “in his honour.”

“The person who got the Nobel Prize called me today and said, ‘I’m accepting this in your honour because you deserved it,’ a very nice thing to do,” Trump said, as quoted by ANI. He added jokingly, “I did not say then, ‘Give it to me,’ though,” drawing laughter from the audience.

Trump said he had “been helping her along the way” and added, “I am happy because I saved millions of lives.”

Machado, who received the 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,” had publicly dedicated it to the “suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause.”

The statement came after social media was flooded with posts showing Trump looking disappointed after the Nobel announcement.

Following Machado’s win, the White House criticised the Nobel Committee’s decision, alleging political bias. “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,” said White House spokesperson Steven Cheung on X.

Trump has long argued that he deserves the Peace Prize, often citing his mediation efforts in global conflicts. During the briefing, he repeated his claim of having “solved eight wars in nine months,” including what he described as a trade-driven de-escalation between India and Pakistan.

“In the case of India and Pakistan, seven planes were shot down, it was a bad one, and I did it largely through trade,” he said. “I talked tariffs, I said, look, if you’re gonna do this, we’re going to put very big tariffs on your country, and they were both great, they stopped fighting and they were two nuclear powers.”

Trump has made similar claims before, though India has dismissed suggestions that Washington played any role in defusing the May conflict.

The loss represents not only a personal disappointment for Trump, who has actively campaigned for the Nobel over the past year, but also a diplomatic setback for Pakistan, one of the countries that formally nominated him, calling him a “champion of peace.”

At the United Nations last month, Trump had said his record was unmatched. “I should have gotten [the prize] four or five times,” he said. “Everyone says I deserve it.”