The stunning fall of Venezuela’s longtime strongman has triggered an unexpected diplomatic subplot: an exiled opposition leader publicly crediting President Donald Trump with a moral victory she says reshapes the meaning of her own Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaking Monday night on Fox News, Venezuela opposition figure María Corina Machado hailed the Trump administration’s capture of Nicolás Maduro as a historic turning point and said she would be willing to personally give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize — an award she argues he has earned through action.

“January 3 will go down in history as the day justice defeated tyranny,” Machado told host Sean Hannity. “It’s a milestone — not only for the Venezuelan people and our future, but for humanity, for freedom and human dignity.”

Machado, who spent years in hiding under Maduro’s rule and continues to operate largely from exile, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her leadership against what the Norwegian Nobel Committee described as Venezuela’s dictatorship. She said she immediately dedicated the prize to Donald Trump, insisting that his decisive intervention proved skeptics wrong.

“Let me be very clear,” Machado said. “As soon as I learned that we had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I dedicated it to Trump because I knew at that point he deserved it. Most people said it was impossible to achieve what he has just done.”

Pressed on whether she had formally offered Trump the award, Machado said the moment had not yet come — but made clear the gesture was more than rhetorical.

“I would certainly love to be able to personally tell him that we, the Venezuelan people — because this is a prize of the Venezuelan people — want to give it to him and share it with him,” she said.

The gushing praise comes as the Trump administration signals caution about Machado’s political viability inside Venezuela. Trump told the New York Post over the weekend that he was uncertain Machado had “the support of the people that she has to have,” even as Washington opted not to immediately install her or another opposition figure in power.

Instead, Maduro’s longtime vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, was sworn in Monday as interim president, a move that reflects U.S. intelligence assessments prioritizing short-term stability over a rapid political handoff. According to the Wall Street Journal, the CIA concluded Rodríguez was better positioned to maintain order in the fragile post-Maduro environment, while Machado could face fierce resistance from security forces and paramilitary groups loyal to the old regime.

That judgment has frustrated segments of the Venezuelan opposition, even as Machado frames Maduro’s capture as an irreversible moral defeat.

Maduro himself struck a defiant tone during his first appearance in Manhattan federal court on Monday, where he appeared in chains and claimed he had been “kidnapped,” declaring, “I am a decent man,” as prosecutors advanced sweeping charges tied to narcotics trafficking and terrorism.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)