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| - During a Fox News interview, Machahdo responded to a question about a rumor that she had offered Trump her Nobel Peace Prize. She said "it hasn't happened yet," but added that "the Venezuelan people … certainly want to give it to him" and "share it with him." However, Nobel Prizes can't be officially transferred to someone else after they are awarded, so Machado couldn't make Trump a laureate.
In the days after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, social media posts claimed Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado (sometimes misspelled in posts as "Marina") went on Fox News and offered to
Machado was awarded the 2025 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," according to the Nobel Prize website.
One Facebook post (archived) post, for example, said: "BREAKING: Venezuelan opposition leader Marina Corina Machado goes on Fox News to offer to 'give' her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump after he refused to support her taking over as the country's new president."
The claim spread across multiple platforms, including X, Threads, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit, often sharing the same short clip from Fox's interview. One X post captioned it:
Hannity: Did you at any point offered to give him the Nobel peace prize?
Machado: It hasn't happened yet. We want to give it to him. Share it with him.
In short, during a January 2026 Fox News interview, Machado responded to a question about a rumor that she had offered Trump her Nobel Peace Prize. She said "it hasn't happened yet," but added that "the Venezuelan people" — because it is "the prize of the Venezuelan people" — "certainly want to give it to him" and "share it with him."
Even so, the Nobel Peace Prize can't be officially transferred in a way that would make someone else a laureate.
What Machado said on Fox News
We traced the claim to a Fox News interview with Machado that aired Jan. 5, 2026, in which host Sean Hannity referenced the idea directly and asked whether she had offered Trump the Nobel.
In the clip, Hannity asked: "Did you at any point offer to give him the Nobel Peace Prize? Did that actually happen? I had read that somewhere, but wasn't sure if it was true."
Machado responded:
Well, it hasn't happened yet, but I
certainly'd love to be able to personally tell him that we believe, the Venezuelan people, because it is the prize of the Venezuelan people, certainly want to give it to him, share it with him. What he has done, as I said, is historic. It's a huge step towards a democratic transition, and I want to convey this to the American people, Sean.
The moment in question appears at 5:26 in the YouTube video below:
Earlier in the interview, Machado said she hadn't spoken with Trump since Oct. 10, 2025 — the day the prize was announced. As we reported at the time, Trump told reporters during a news conference that Machado had called him and said she was accepting the award "in honor of" him because he "really deserved it."
What Trump said about Machado
Some social media posts framed Machado's statement as a response to Trump refusing to back her as Venezuela's next leader. For example, one Facebook post explicitly said she went on Fox News after Trump "refused to support her taking over as the country's new president."
That framing is broadly consistent with how major outlets described the political backdrop in early January 2026. Reuters, The Associated Press and CBS News all reported that Trump publicly questioned whether Machado could lead Venezuela and that the U.S. was instead dealing with acting President Delcy Rodríguez as an interim power broker after Maduro's removal. For instance, CBS reported Trump told reporters Machado "doesn't have the respect" needed to lead. Reuters similarly reported U.S. officials viewed Rodríguez and other regime insiders as the best bet for short-term stability.
At the same time, Machado has publicly argued that the opposition coalition, not Maduro's former inner circle, should lead the transition. In a CBS News interview published Jan. 6, she said "absolutely" when asked whether she should be the next leader, adding that her coalition has a "president-elect" in Edmundo González. As of this writing, however, Rodríguez was the interim president.
It's not possible to transfer the Nobel prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to a specific named laureate, person or organization, and it consists of a medal, a personal diploma and a cash award. The Nobel Foundation's statutes make the award decision final, stating: "No appeals may be made against the decision of a prize-awarding body with regard to the award of a prize." That effectively means there's no formal mechanism to later reassign the laureate or to "transfer" the prize to someone else.
The statutes also allow a prize to be awarded jointly to three individuals, but that decision is made at the time of the award by the Nobel committee, not something a laureate can revise afterward:
A prize amount may be equally divided between two works, each of which is considered to merit a prize. If a work that is being rewarded has been produced by two or three persons, the prize shall be awarded to them jointly. In no case may a prize amount be divided between more than three persons.
For further reading, we examined claims Machado dedicated her 2025 Nobel Prize to Trump.
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