👀Machado to meet with Trump to give him her Nobel Peace Prize

Two Trump associates say Rachel Campos-Duffy has been pushing for the meeting privately.

Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition figure and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, attends a press conference on December 11, 2025 in Oslo, Norway. (Photo by Rune Hellestad/Getty Images)

Venezuelan opposition leader MARÍA CORINA MACHADO has been pushing for an audience with President DONALD TRUMP to “give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize,” a Trump confidant told me earlier today.

Tonight, the president announced on SEAN HANNITY’s program: Machado is coming to see him next week.

“I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her,” Trump said. “I heard that she wants to do that [with her peace prize] — it would be a great honor.”

And so begins the campaign to persuade the president to endorse yet another change of leadership in Venezuela…

For Machado, this is about much more than any award. After living in hiding for 16 months, she will almost certainly use the opportunity to press the president on the future of her country — but especially her own role in it as a leader.

The overture, after all, comes after the president publicly questioned Machado’s ability to govern — even as her party won more than 70 percent of the vote in Venezuela’s last election. Instead, Trump has tacitly backed interim leader DELCY RODRÍGUEZ, NICOLÁS MADURO’s former right hand.

A recent CIA assessment concluded that, following a sudden power vacuum, Machado and her opposition party would face challenges governing — and that Rodriguez would offer greater short-term stability. Secretary of State MARCO RUBIO also reportedly cautioned the president that backing the opposition could lead to a deteriorating situation that could necessitate a full-on U.S. military intervention.

“I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader,” Trump told reporters last weekend. “She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”

Machado — who has already dedicated her Peace Prize to Trump — saw that comment and snapped into action. And smartly so: Taking to the president’s favorite news program, she hinted at her desire to repackage her world recognition during a Hannity interview earlier this week.

“I would love to be able to personally tell him — certainly [the] Venezuelan people want to give [the peace prize] to him,” Machado told Hannity. “What he has done in his work is a huge step towards a democratic country.”

But the effort to get Machado face-time with the president has involved more than the standard flattery it takes to catch the attention of the most powerful man in the world. Behind the scenes, Fox News personality RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY, the wife of Transportation Secretary SEAN DUFFY, has been pushing for the meeting, according to two Trump associates familiar with the dynamics. (The president is fond of Campos-Duffy, I’m told.)

Compos-Duffy has also been making her case on TV. This week on Fox News, she argued that while she understands the Trump Administration is wary of enabling chaos, Rodriguez is “the wrong person in charge,” was behind executions of dissenters and has acted as “torturer in chief.”

“It’s very troubling that she remains in place, and I’m worried about these decisions,” she said of Rodriguez. “She is a communist, hardcore anti-American and she’s incredibly corrupt… So this is all [a] very difficult situation that we’re in right now. But I think we would be better off… if we found a way to put the woman who won the election back in office.”

As for Machado, Compos-Duffy has emphasized on TV that she’s “pro-American,” “respects President Trump,” and has indicated “she will work with the president on economic issues, on the oil, and on rooting out the corruption.”

But if the public arguments don’t change the president’s mind, perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize flattery will…