A reporter confronted President Donald Trump Friday afternoon, Jan. 16, over his acceptance of a gift award that he did not win.
Trump had been hinting that he would be honored to accept the Nobel Peace Prize from 2025 recipient María Corina Machado.
Some reports claimed that Machado’s failure to refuse the prize contributed to Trump’s decision not to support her. Subsequently, Machado told Sean Hannity she’d love to give her award to Trump.
Machado and Trump met on Thursday, Jan. 15, at the White House and Machado gave her Nobel peace prize to the US President who happily accepted it.
The Nobel Institute responded, stating that the honor that goes with the award is non-transferable.
Afterwards, Trump took questions from reporters on the North Lawn of the White House as he made his way to Marine One on his way to Mar-a-Lago, and was asked about his used award.
The reporter said: “Yesterday, yesterday you accepted Maria Machado’s Nobel Prize medal. What do you intend to do with it? And why would you want someone else’s Nobel Prize?”
Trump replied: “Well, she offered it to me. I thought it was very nice. She said, you know, you’ve had eight wars and nobody deserves this prize more than in history than you do. And I thought that was a very nice gesture. And by the way, I think she’s a very fine woman and we’ll be talking again.”
The reporter asked: “You just called Machado a very nice person. He said the meeting went well. Why align with Delci Rodriguez and the remnants of the Maduro regime and not with Machado who has the support of the Venezuelan people?”
Trump responded: “Well, if you ever remember a place called Iraq, where everybody was fired, every single person, the police, the generals, everybody was fired, and they ended up being ISIS. Instead of just getting down to business, they ended being ISIS, so I remember that.
But I’ll tell you, I had a great meeting yesterday by a person who I have a lot of respect for. And she has respect, obviously, for me and our country. And she gave me her Nobel Prize. “
“But I’ll tell you what, I got to know her. I never met her before. And I was very, very impressed. She’s a really, this is a fine woman.”
Watch video below.
https://x.com/i/status/2012276195274985589