Maria Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize: Donald Trump’s Acceptance of It Shows His Vanity

This week the president of the United States finally achieved a lifelong dream, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No, not from the Nobel Committee — they will never give anything to Donald Trump. Instead, Trump did what he is naturally best at: He extorted it from its rightful owner, and then posed with it as a trophy.

Recall that even before the Nobel Peace Prize was announced in October of last year, Trump was notably and publicly peeved at the idea that it might go to someone less deserving than him, namely the anti-Maduro Venezuelan politician and activist Maria Machado. How outrageous an attempt to deny the president his preeminence, when he was the one who bombed Iran’s nuclear sites, deployed our Navy to the Caribbean, threatened to annex Greenland, pondered the dissolution of the Western alliance, and visibly failed to secure peace in the Russo–Ukrainian War. The positively European ingratitude of it all was undeniable: How many penny-ante countries does a man need to use military force against to win a peace prize, after all?

About the Author

Jeffrey Blehar

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.

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This week the president of the United States finally achieved a lifelong dream, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. No, not from the Nobel Committee — they will never give anything to Donald Trump. Instead, Trump did what he is naturally best at: He extorted it from its rightful owner, and then posed with it as a trophy.

Recall that even before the Nobel Peace Prize was announced in October of last year, Trump was notably and publicly peeved at the idea that it might go to someone less deserving than him, namely the anti-Maduro Venezuelan politician and activist Maria Machado. How outrageous an attempt to deny the president his preeminence, when he was the one who bombed Iran’s nuclear sites, deployed our Navy to the Caribbean, threatened to annex Greenland, pondered the dissolution of the Western alliance, and visibly failed to secure peace in the Russo–Ukrainian War. The positively European ingratitude of it all was undeniable: How many penny-ante countries does a man need to use military force against to win a peace prize, after all?

About the Author

Jeffrey Blehar

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.