President Donald Trump’s dream of being handed the Nobel Peace Prize has been killed within hours of him saying what an “honor” it would be.
Trump, 79, is due to host Nobel laureate María Corina Machado in the Oval Office next week, amid a public and behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to have Machado hand her prize to Trump, both to appease the president and to encourage him to endorse her as a replacement for deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Speaking about that possibility in an interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday, Trump lit up, saying: “I’ve heard that she wants to do that. That would be a great honor.”
Trump went into his now-familiar riff about his peace credentials, boasting, “I’ve stopped eight wars” and calling it “a very big embarrassment” that he hadn’t been given the prize. He argued that “when you put out eight wars, in theory, you should get one for each war.”
Within hours, however, Trump’s hopes were dashed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which said its rules do not permit the passing on of its coveted prize to someone else.
A spokesperson told the Daily Beast on Friday: “A Nobel Prize can neither be revoked nor transferred to others. Once the announcement of the laureate(s) has been made, the decision stands for all time. As for the prize money, the laureate(s) are free to dispose of it as they see fit.”
The organization’s refusal to bend its own rules will be a disappointment not just to Trump but also to some of his loyalists, who are reported to have lobbied for Machado to hand the president the prize he so covets.
Fox News presenter Rachel Campos-Duffy, the wife of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, both 54, is reported to have been working both publicly and privately to get Machado to offer the prize to Trump when they meet next week, according to political journalist Rachael Bade‘s Substack.
Campos-Duffy is said to have worked hard to get Machado the Oval Office audience where she would “give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize,” Bade writes, saying the push has come from Trump-world insiders who know the president is fixated on the award.
The Venezuelan opposition leader, who had spent months in hiding before the U.S.-led operation that removed Maduro on Jan. 3, plans to press Trump on both the future of her country and her own role in leading it.
Trump has said of that prospect: “I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader… She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.” Trump has instead tacitly backed interim acting leader Delcy Rodríguez.
But in public as well as in private, Campos-Duffy has tried to flip that script, according to Bade, and has argued on air that Rodríguez is “the wrong person in charge,” alleging that she was behind executions of dissenters and had acted as “torturer in chief.”
By contrast, Campos-Duffy has described Machado as “pro-American,” said she “respects President Trump,” and stressed that Machado “will work with the president on economic issues, on the oil, and on rooting out the corruption.”
Trump has spent years insisting he deserves the Peace Prize for supposedly ending a string of global conflicts, even inventing one between far-flung countries to pad his list of “wins.” However, the Norwegian committee gave the 2025 Peace Prize to Machado instead of him, despite his lobbying campaign.
Allies have tried to fill the void with ersatz accolades. FIFA boss Gianni Infantino invented a “FIFA Peace Prize” that was handed to Trump onstage at the Kennedy Center weeks after the Nobel committee passed him over.
The Daily Beast has contacted Campos-Duffy via Fox News and the White House for comment.
