It’s Jan. 10, 2026, and Donald Trump is somehow still campaigning for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee had to break a 124‑year tradition of never explaining or revoking their picks in order to directly address Trump and tell him that their prizes cannot be “transferred.”
In the short time we’ve covered this year, President Trump has already abducted a Venezuelan president and released a statement that they are ready to consider military action to take Greenland away from NATO ally Denmark. Yet, he still is of the opinion that he was “snubbed” by the Nobel Committee for a Nobel Peace Prize. So much so that he even accepted a first‑of‑its‑kind peace prize from the global soccer organization FIFA, perennially accused of corruption. Some on the internet joked that it was like the NFL giving an award for physics.
Before Trump invaded Venezuela, he was seizing and bombing tankers from the nation, accusing Nicolás Maduro of shipping drugs into the US. In Venezuela, head of the opposition María Corina Machado was fighting Maduro on a more personal front, with much more to lose and much less support. Machado subsequently went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, owing to her bravery. Venezuela is one of the most oil‑rich nations in the world — so significant attention is paid globally to their internal politics.
But Trump opted to contravene preestablished UN rules prohibiting the invasion of sovereign nations, and he plans to extract as many oil barrels from Venezuela as his administration possibly can. But as Trump looks for another placeholder leader for the nation, he has refused to vouch for Machado — and a lot of people on the internet are hypothesizing that it might be because he lost the Peace Prize to her.
Machado has since been using her political maneuvering to do all but just claim she should have lost the award to Trump. She dedicated the award to him, and she has conducted livestreams with Donald Trump Jr. promising great reapings for US oil companies if she ran the country. Nothing worked; in fact, reports even came out alleging that Trump is of the opinion that Machado should have rejected the award in his honor.
Since then, Trump has been backing Maduro’s closest allies to continue their regime in Venezuela, which would go against the Trump claim that they are “liberating” the nation. Yet still, Trump said he might be willing to accept the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize should Machado offer it to him — subtly sending a message to Machado about what she might have to do if she wants to make the US an ally of her potential administration.
The Nobel Prize Committee was then pushed to release a one‑of‑its‑kind announcement that their decisions are “final and stand for all time.” Social media users were livid. One compared Trump’s loss to that of sports losses. Another jokingly suggested that Trump might even end up trying to steal the award.
I find it preposterous that an American holding the highest office is demanding that Machado hand over the Nobel Peace Prize to him when she visits the US!!
— Moral Victory (@lakshmianand96) January 10, 2026
It is like Roger Federer demanding that Djokovic handover the Wimbledon Trophy to him after he loses just because Federer…
They didn’t tell it can’t be stolen. That will be the next approach of
— Jishnu (@JishnuRaghu) January 10, 2026
Every time the president now mentions the Nobel Peace Prize, the demand for the award just seems more ridiculous to observers.
