ISTANBUL

US President Donald Trump on Friday said that he spoke with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado shortly after she was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

“The person who actually got the Nobel Prize called today, called me and said, ‘I’m accepting this in honor of you, because you really deserved it’,” Trump told reporters Friday evening, according to a CNN report.

“A very nice thing to do... I didn’t say, ‘Then give it to me,’ though I think she might have. She was very nice,” he added.

“I’ve been helping her along the way,” Trump said. “They need a lot of help in Venezuela, it’s a basic disaster. So, and you could also say it was given out for ’24 and I was running for office in ‘24.”

Speaking to El Pais, Machado confirmed she had talked with Trump but declined to share details, expressing gratitude “to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause.”

Earlier, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung accused the Nobel Committee of placing “politics over peace.”

“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” Cheung said in a social media post.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered rare praise for Trump, saying in Tajikistan that the US leader was “really doing a lot to resolve complex crises.” Trump reposted the clip on his Truth Social account with the caption: “Thank you to President Putin!”

Analysts suggested the Nobel Committee’s decision may have carried a broader message.

“It seems to me that the Nobel Committee would prefer that both the United States and the Venezuelan opposition continue to fight peacefully for change,” Benjamin Gedan, former National Security Council (NSC) official for Venezuela, told CNN.