‘She offered it to me’

She came. She saw. She made an offering he couldn’t resist.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado presented her newly-minted 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to President Donald Trump during their Jan. 15 meeting at the White House.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Trump is keeping the long-coveted award, a White House official confirmed to USA TODAY on Jan 16.

Asked by a reporter on Jan. 16 as he was about to board Marine One on the White House South Lawn, why he would want someone else’s Nobel Prize, Trump said: “Well, she offered it to me.”

“I thought it was very nice. She said, ‘you know, you’ve ended eight wars and nobody deserves this prize more than, in history, than you do,” he said. “And I thought it was a very nice gesture. And by the way, I think she’s a very fine woman. And we’ll be talking again.”

The meeting came less than two weeks after U.S. forces captured the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores on Jan. 3 and days after he shared a doctored Wikipedia page calling himself the “Acting President of Venezuela” in a Truth Social post.

The Nobel laureate seems to a have taken note of Trump’s penchant for gold when she presented her 18-carat gold medal in a large gold frame, with the following inscription: “In Gratitude for Your Extraordinary Leadership in Promoting Peace through Strength, Advancing Diplomacy, and Defending Liberty and Property.”

“Maria presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, soon after the Jan. 15 meeting. “Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you Maria!.”

Machado, 58, has sought to have a role in the new Venezuelan government and political watchers believe the gesture is intended to soften Trump’s posture towards her after he threw his support behind Delcy Rodríguez, the country’s vice president under Maduro. Rodriguez was sworn in as Venezuela’s new interim president last week and has said she wants to collaborate with the U.S. administration.

Maduro and his wife have been arraigned in a Manhattan federal court on charges including drug trafficking and have pleaded not guilty. They are in U.S. custody in Brooklyn.

After Machado was blocked from running in the 2024 presidential election by the Maduro regime, she supported the opposition’s alternative candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia. While Urrutia won, the regime declared victory.

“Ms Machado is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize first and foremost for her efforts to advance democracy in Venezuela,” the Nobel Committee said.

The Nobel Committee released a statement saying “A Nobel Prize can neither be revoked, shared, nor transferred to others. Once the announcement has been made, the decision stands for all time.”

Machado sought to frame her gift in historical terms. She recounted how Marquis de Lafayette, the French officer who joined the Continental Army under George Washington in the American Revolutionary War, had handed a medal with the image of Washington, the first U.S. president, to Venezuelan military officer Simon Bolivar who fought against Spain in 1825.

“Two hundred years in history, the people of Bolivar are giving back to the heir of Washington a medal,” she said. “in this case, the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize as a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom.”

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump will keep the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize given to Machado