During President Donald Trump's recent meeting with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado – who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize — Machado confirmed that she gave Trump the Nobel medal he has openly coveted for more than a year.
"I presented the President of the United States the medal, the Nobel Peace Prize," Machado told reporters on Thursday.
Despite Machado's gesture, it is effectively meaningless as the Nobel Institute has stated that the vaunted prize cannot be "revoked, shared or transferred to others." The Institute added that their decision to award the prize to someone is "final and stands for all time." CBS News national security editor similarly remarked that Machado handing over her medal to Trump marks "a change in ownership, not title."
"For instance, there’s several veterans who have given their Purple Heart medals to President Trump but that doesn’t make him a Purple Heart recipient," LaPorta tweeted. "While a great symbolic gesture, there’s a difference between ownership and title."
Others on social media heaped mockery on the president after his meeting with Machado, which came about after weeks of Trump saying openly that he deserved the award more than the Venezuelan activist. On X, fashion influencer Derek Guy called the event "humiliating for everyone involved."
"BREAKING: I will be entering the NFL Hall of Fame by conducting a daring raid on Devin Hester’s house and stealing his gold jacket," retired NFL punter Chris Kluwe wrote on Bluesky. "Sportswriters of America, please adjust your stats accordingly."
"F—— hell," tweeted sci-fi author Paul S. Edwards. "He really is a baby."
Vanity Fair Washington correspondent Aidan McLaughlin wondered: "How long until Trump posts to Truth Social that he is honored to be the recipient of a Nobel peace prize?" Progressive influencer Jordan Uhl took a similar tack and tweeted: "We're on the verge of quite possibly the funniest Truth Social post of all time."
"It’s hard to believe no one has ever tried winning the Nobel Peace Prize by extorting the most recent winner for it before," writer Tim Price posted to Bluesky.