{"id":241901,"date":"2026-01-16T21:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T21:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/241901\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T21:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T21:03:09","slug":"why-trump-accepting-machados-nobel-peace-prize-is-no-laughing-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/241901\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Trump accepting Machado\u2019s Nobel Peace Prize is no laughing matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Venezuelan opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado\u2019s presentation Thursday of her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Donald Trump<\/a> was instant fodder for ridicule among Trump\u2019s opponents.\n <\/p>\n

\n ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel even displayed a series of awards he had won \u2013 or joked he had won, in the case of a 2015 Soul Train Awards \u201cWhite Person of the Year\u201d prize. He offered them to Trump<\/a> in exchange for the president pulling ICE out of Minneapolis.\n <\/p>\n

\n The situation is certainly funny, in a way. Trump\u2019s unquenchable thirst for recognition led him to accept a newly made-up \u201cFIFA Peace Prize\u201d that was obviously created to curry favor with him after he failed to win his coveted Nobel. (The ceremony last month was really something else<\/a>.) And now Trump has accepted someone else\u2019s Nobel medal, even as the Nobel committee has made it abundantly clear that the award itself is not transferrable.\n <\/p>\n

\n But in another way, it\u2019s not really a laughing matter \u2013 as Kimmel\u2019s bit showed.\n <\/p>\n

\n While this kind of ring-kissing has become the norm with Trump, it\u2019s especially galling in this instance.\n <\/p>\n

\n You could certainly be forgiven for thinking Machado felt pressured into handing over the medal. And regardless, the whole thing raises the prospect that some very serious foreign policy decisions with massive implications are being influenced, at least in part, through personal flattery.\n <\/p>\n

\n The saga began last year, when Trump began engaging in an extremely unsubtle effort to lobby for a Nobel prize.\n <\/p>\n

\n When the award in October instead went to Machado for her efforts to counter Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, she seemed to sense an opportunity.\n <\/p>\n

\n She quickly dedicated her award to the US president who so coveted it \u2013 all while suggestively playing up his role remaking Venezuela\u2019s government.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy,\u201d she posted on X<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n In a later interview with CNN\u2019s Christiane Amanpour, Machado again spoke of why she dedicated the award to Trump, but this time with a more explicit request<\/a> \u2013 that he help end Maduro\u2019s \u201cwar\u201d on Venezuela.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe need the help of the president of the United States to stop this war, because it is about human lives,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Machado didn\u2019t directly respond when pressed on whether she was asking for an American military intervention, but she didn\u2019t dispute that either.\n <\/p>\n

\n Less than three months later, that\u2019s what she got. On January 3, the Trump administration launched a brief mission to oust Maduro.\n <\/p>\n

\n Yet later that day in a news conference, Trump surprised many \u2013 and disappointed Venezuelan pro-democracy activists \u2013 by declining to back Machado as Maduro\u2019s replacement.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump said it would be \u201cvery tough for her to be the leader\u201d and added twice that she didn\u2019t \u201chave the respect within the country.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Two days later, Machado appeared with one of Trump\u2019s favorite TV hosts, Fox News\u2019 Sean Hannity, who floated another potential gesture. He said he had heard \u201csomewhere\u201d that she might actually give Trump her Nobel medal.\n <\/p>\n

\"Venezuelan<\/p>\n

\n Machado indicated that would soon happen \u2014 and now it has.\n <\/p>\n

\n One way to read all of this is that Trump\u2019s lobbying campaign has paid off. But it paid off with a woman who just won a major award \u2013 one for which she quite literally risked her life \u2013 feeling compelled to turn it over less than three months later to try to keep Trump in her corner.\n <\/p>\n

\n (Trump on Thursday did not signal a shift in his posture<\/a> on Machado leading Venezuela, and the White House said his earlier assessment had not changed.)\n <\/p>\n

\n The other way to read this situation is that regardless of the pressure, Machado used the medal as a bargaining chip.\n <\/p>\n

\n You could hardly blame her for using it for leverage, given the stakes involved for her and her country.\n <\/p>\n

\n But this dynamic also underscores the real risks of Trump\u2019s emphasis on flattery. And it raises the prospect that decisions as serious as ousting a foreign leader and shaping that country\u2019s future could be made, at least in part, based upon personal laurels.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s for precisely this kind of reason that the founders put in the Constitution an \u201cEmoluments Clause<\/a>\u201d that prevents federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign states without the consent of Congress. (You might remember lots of talk about \u201cemoluments\u201d in Trump\u2019s first term.)\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cForeign powers will intermeddle in our affairs, and spare no expense to influence them,\u201d Elbridge Gerry said.\n <\/p>\n

\n A gift of a medal from Machado likely wouldn\u2019t violate the emoluments clause, given she is not a head of state. (A 2009 Justice Department legal opinion on then-President Barack Obama accepting the Nobel prize he won suggests as much<\/a>. It said the prize was acceptable because the gift wasn\u2019t from a \u201cKing, Prince, or foreign State.\u201d Obama did donate the $1.4 million cash prize<\/a> to charity.)\n <\/p>\n

\n But Machado seems to have reasoned that presenting her medal to Trump could have some kind of influence on him.\n <\/p>\n

\n Did her dedication of the award and flattery play any role in Trump\u2019s decision to oust Maduro? Or will her handing over of the medal influence Trump\u2019s future decisions as he exercises what he\u2019s labeled \u201ccontrol\u201d of her country? The US president could play a major role in deciding whether Machado ever comes to power<\/a>, as CNN\u2019s Stefano Pozzebon wrote this week.\n <\/p>\n

\n We\u2019ll probably never know. But Trump has shown he\u2019s nothing if not transactional. And this episode, perhaps better than any before it, highlights the potential problems with Trump\u2019s insistence on adulation and awards.\n <\/p>\n

\n To the extent any of it influences his actions, it means decisions are being made at least in part based on Trump\u2019s interest, rather than based on the country\u2019s interest. Personal interests undoubtedly often come into play in such decisions \u2013 especially personal political interest \u2013 but this would be even more direct than that.\n <\/p>\n

\n That\u2019s the prospect Trump raises by accepting \u2013 if not effectively requesting \u2013 this gift from a foreign figure with an agenda. Even one that\u2019s probably quite sympathetic to lots of Americans.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venezuelan opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado\u2019s presentation Thursday of her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Donald Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-241901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}