UPDATE: STATEMENT FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE COMMITTEE ON MARIA CORINA MACHADO'S NOBEL PEACE PRIZE & Nobel Foundation Speaks Out After Machado Gifts Trump Peace Prize 18JAN26

 

SHE will be forever known as whore of Venezuela who was one of donald j drumpf's / trump's favorite ass lickers. She has shamed the people of Venezuela and embarrassed the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.  NOT MY pres drumpf / trump just continues his self destructive narcissistic, psychotic, sociopathic journey with as many of the magat cult and "christian nationalist" and the gop / guardians of pedophiles & sexual predators-republicans as he can deceive and manipulate into following him. Article from Newsweek.....

Nobel Foundation Speaks Out After Machado Gifts Trump Peace Prize

The Nobel Foundation, the group responsible for administrating the various Nobel prizes, on Sunday issued a clarification around the rules for handing out the prizes after Venezuela's opposition leader María Corina Machado offered her peace prize to President Donald Trump, which he accepted.

"The Foundation upholds Alfred Nobel’s will and its stipulations," the foundation wrote in a statement posted to X on Sunday. "It states that the prizes shall be awarded to those who 'have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind,' and it specifies who has the right to award each respective prize."

"A prize can therefore not, even symbolically, be passed on or further distributed," the foundation stressed.

Newsweek reached out to the White House by email outside of normal business hours on Sunday morning for comment.

Why It Matters

The saga surrounding Trump's desire for the Nobel Peace Prize has carried on throughout both his administrations, stemming from the fact that President Barack Obama received the award in 2009, just one year into his first administration.

Trump made a renewed push for the prize during his second term with an emphasis on ending international conflicts. By the end of the first year of his second term, he claimed to have enacted eight peace deals to end conflicts in various regions, including conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, India and Pakistan, Thailand and Cambodia, and Israel and Hamas.

However, some of the nations involved in those deals dispute the degree to which Trump was actually involved, and the deal between Thailand and Cambodia collapsed, forcing Trump to pursue a second deal just six weeks after they had signed the first deal he put together.

Ultimately, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize went to Machado for her role in seeking to advance democracy in Venezuela.

What To Know

Following the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the question as to who would replace him remained open, with the administration supporting the Interim President Delcy Rodriguez while engaging with Machado in her bid to oust Maduro's regime and install a democratically elected government free of the suspicion and doubt that surrounded Maduro's most recent electoral victory.

However, Trump has said that he does not believe Machado has the support of the Venezuelan people to effectively take over as leader of the country, despite overwhelmingly winning the primary to face Maduro in an election in 2024 as the candidate for the Vente Venezuela party. The Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal of Justice ultimately disqualified her from running for president, much to the outcry of several world and regional leaders.

During her visit to the White House last week, Machado offered Trump her Nobel prize, which he accepted. Some analysts believed she made the offer in an attempt to bring the president around to supporting her bid to lead Venezuela.

The Nobel Peace Center issued a statement following the exchange between Machado and Trump, stressing in a post on X that the Peace Prize is not designed to be transferred.

"One truth remains," the committee wrote, in part. "As the Norwegian Nobel Committee states: 'Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others. The decision is final and stands for all time.' A medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot."

The Nobel Foundation followed on Sunday, saying that "one of the core missions of the Nobel Foundation is to safeguard the dignity of the Nobel Prizes and their administration" before also stressing that the prize cannot be transferred, even symbolically.

"A laureate cannot share the prize with others, nor transfer it once it has been announced. A Nobel Peace Prize can also never be revoked. The decision is final and applies for all time," the Nobel Norwegian Committee, the body responsible for handing out the Peace Prize, said in a statement posted on its website.

It added: "The Committee does not comment on laureates’ subsequent statements, decisions, or actions. Any ongoing assessments or choices made by laureates must be understood as their own responsibility. There are no restrictions in the statutes of the Nobel Foundation on what a laureate may do with the medal, the diploma, or the prize money. This means that a laureate is free to keep, give away, sell, or donate these items."

What People Are Saying

President Donald Trump in a post on Truth Social last week: "It was my Great Honor to meet María Corina Machado, of Venezuela, today. She is a wonderful woman who has been through so much. María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!"

The White House in a post on X last week: "President Donald J. Trump meets with María Corina Machado of Venezuela in the Oval Office, during which she presented the President with her Nobel Peace Prize in recognition and honor."

Commentator Brian Krassenstein wrote on X on Sunday: "The Nobel Foundation just clarified things further… In other words Trump trading the prize from Machado doesn’t count. He will still never have a Nobel Peace prize. Cry some more MAGA."

Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman in a post on X earlier this month: "Trump’s obsession with getting the Nobel Peace Prize reflects a broader Maga phenomenon - craving for acceptance and praise from a 'liberal' establishment they claim to despise."

The God They Preach at the Pentagon 13JAN26

I am tempted to judge the Christianity of many who claim the faith but don't ( in my opinion ) live it. Then I remind myself there are some ( maybe many ) who have the same thoughts about my claim of being a Christian and realize judgement of one's personal faith is best left to God. However, I will not hesitate to judge the claim of being Christian when it based on the rejection and perversion of the tenets of Christianity as apostasy. "christian" nationalism is apostasy, a perversion of Christianity and those who proclaim it as Christianity are the false prophets, the wolves in sheep's clothing we are warned about in Scripture. This from Sojourners.....

The God They Preach at the Pentagon

By Michael Woolf

Jan 13, 2026

On Dec. 17, 2025, evangelical minister and Republican political activist Franklin Graham led a Christmas worship service at the Pentagon, where he preached about God being a “God of war.” I find it to be one of the most bizarre Christmas sermons ever given, but it was telling. In fact, it telegraphed the foreign policy of the U.S. 

A few weeks later, President Donald Trump would order the kidnapping and extradition of Nicolás Maduro to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges. Now is the time for Christians to reclaim the message of peace that is at the heart of the gospel, and to resist imperialism.

While there are undoubtedly many root causes of this violation of international law, one of them is Christian nationalism and its insistence that the U.S. is a country chosen by God. Once a country’s chosenness has been established, all things become possible, from invading foreign countries so that the U.S. can “run” them and control their oil reserves to acquiring Greenland by force.

While this idea has no bearing in scripture, it does represent the apotheosis of one of the U.S.’s most sacred beliefs: American exceptionalism. That hubris has often led to disastrous results for both the U.S. and the world. From the Cold War to the War on Terror, the U.S.’s self-conception as a global police force has led to death and misery, with at least 80 people being killed in the attack on Caracas, Venezuela as the latest example.

That exceptionalism, perhaps best embodied by this administration’s “America First” doctrine, manifests as unlimited power that ignores both international law and the U.S. Constitution. When asked what constrained his actions, Trump replied that his morality was “the only thing that can stop me.” In this understanding of the U.S.’s might and power, the guiding question is not whether something should be done, but whether something can be done. As far as Trump is concerned, anything that constrains America’s power or the will of its leader must be tossed aside.

What is striking about such claims is that they emerge from the idea that the U.S. is a Christian nation. On Dec. 21, 2025, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech at a Turning Point USA event where he argued that “Christianity is America’s creed” and that “by the grace of God, we will always be a Christian nation.” As a casual review of the U.S.’s founding documents reveals, it is a myth that this country was ever meant to be a “Christian” nation.

When dangerous theology becomes policy, Christians have a unique opportunity to propose better ideas about the nature of God, and we can start in scripture. Peace is so central to Jesus’ ministry that it takes a willful misconstrual of his message to imagine a Christianity that is compatible with violence of any kind, let alone imperialism and war. From Jesus’ “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9), to his straightforward command to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44), it is clear that God is a God of peace, not war—no matter what Franklin Graham or anyone else says.

READ MORE: After Maduro, Venezuelan Christians Pray for End to U.S. Imperialism

It is time to call such characterizations of God what they are: not just bad theology, but the creation of an entirely different deity, one who has more in common with the Roman god of war Mars than the God of scripture. In that same Christmas sermon, Graham said that God “hates” and spent much time dwelling on an obscure story from 1 Samuel 15 that has been used to support ethnic cleansing and genocide. Sermons like Graham’s reveal little about God and much more about the sorts of power that Christian nationalists worship.

In imagining a god with unlimited power and desire to punish, they are ignoring some of the very best ideas about who God is. The Jewish idea of tzimtzum describes how creation came not from the exertion of God’s divine power but instead from God’s withdrawal. In order to create something that was not divine, God had to recede to create a space for that thing to exist. This idea is echoed from a Christian perspective in Marilynne Robinson’s fantastic book, Reading Genesis, where she argues that restraint is one of God’s key attributes. In making human beings, Robinson argues that “God must practice almost limitless restraint,” leading to her conclusion that “to refrain, to put aside power, is godlike.”

Especially in a time when the line between church and state is being blurred, ideas about God and the use of power are tangled up with one another. If God is all-powerful and all-vengeful, then the state can pursue its goals without any hindrance or accountability. But if God is fundamentally restrained, discretionary, and extremely thoughtful about the use of direct intervention, that models what good use of power looks like for the state as well.

It’s laughable to imagine that God would be in favor of the U.S. kidnapping the leader of Venezuela and seizing control of the nation and its lucrative oil reserves, and yet that is exactly the sort of idea that Christians are forced to confront head-on. It wouldn’t be the first time that Christian theology has been used to justify U.S. aggression. During the Vietnam War, the popular evangelist and Franklin Graham’s father, Billy Graham, as well as Archbishop Francis Spellman, and former Christianity Today editor-in-chief Carl F. H. Henry all lent theological and ethical support to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Spellman even blessed B-52 bombers with holy water.

Theology is never neutral; it can be used to bless bombers or fight imperialism. As in previous times, Christians are confronted with a choice. As German liberation theologian Dorothee Sölle warned in her 1990 book The Window of Vulnerability, “We have learned to use our tradition. If we do not, it will use us.” We cannot allow Christian nationalism to remake God in its own violent image and use theology to advance its own ends. Instead, we must forcefully advance a theology that makes peace—not power—holy.

Michael Woolf

Michael Woolf is the senior minister of Lake Street Church of Evanston in Illinois.

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Peace is so central to Jesus’ ministry that it takes a willful misconstrual of his message to imagine a Christianity that is compatible with violence of any kind, let alone imperialism and war.

UPDATE: A Tale of Two Meetings: Trump Chooses Oil Over Democracy 16JAN26

 VENEZUELAN acting pres delcy rodriguez and the winner of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential elections maria corina machado are competing for the title of lowest class of Venezuelan whore to sell out themselves and their nation. Their groveling to the drumpf / trump-vance administration and their blatant drumpf / trump, vance and rubio ass licking is disgusting, their fellow Venezuelans should be ashamed. From the New York Times.....

A Tale of Two Meetings: Trump Chooses Oil Over Democracy

Two conversations this week confirmed that President Trump backs the remnants of Nicolás Maduro’s regime over the Venezuelan opposition seeking to hold elections.

By Jack Nicas

Jack Nicas is a lead correspondent in Latin America.

Jan. 16, 2026, 3:02 a.m. ET

One has U.S. sanctions imposed on her for undermining democracy. The other just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Both want to lead Venezuela.

President Trump made clear this week which one he preferred.

Delcy Rodríguez — the sanctioned vice president of the ousted autocrat Nicolás Maduro — is “a terrific person” with whom “we’re getting along very well,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday after what he described as a “great conversation” with Ms. Rodríguez, whom he has backed as Venezuela’s interim president.

A day later, he had lunch with María Corina Machado — leader of the Venezuelan opposition — and took the medal she was awarded for the Nobel Peace Prize, which he had repeatedly said he deserved.

During their meeting, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that “based on realities on the ground,” Mr. Trump believed Ms. Machado lacked the respect and support to be Venezuela’s leader. That echoed his previous comments, despite signs of Ms. Machado’s broad approval in Venezuela.

As for Ms. Rodríguez? She has “been extremely cooperative” and agreed to share Venezuela’s oil with the United States, Ms. Leavitt said, so “the president likes what he’s seeing and will expect that cooperation to continue.”

Mr. Trump’s now-clear endorsement of a Maduro loyalist over a crusader for democracy supports the notion that his goal in Venezuela appears to be first about creating a stable, allied source of oil — and then maybe, if and when the time comes, a democratic transition.

“He is also committed to hopefully seeing elections in Venezuela one day,” Ms. Leavitt said Thursday. “But I don’t have an updated timetable for you today.”

Ms. Machado said the time was now. “I told him we’re ready to move forward quickly and effectively toward a transition to democracy,” she said on Thursday in a 1,000-word news release about her visit to Washington. She added that she had told Mr. Trump about human-rights abuses committed under Mr. Maduro and Ms. Rodríguez.

Mr. Trump’s 48-word social media post about the meeting thanked Ms. Machado for giving him “her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done.” He added it was “such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”

(The Nobel Institute again shared a public reminder on Thursday that the 7-ounce gold medal “can change owners, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot.”)

Ms. Machado later told Fox News that she had given Mr. Trump the medal on behalf of the Venezuelan people “because he deserves it.”

Around the same time, in Venezuela, Ms. Rodríguez was delivering her first State of the Union address — and skewering the United States.

“There is a stain on our relations,” she told the National Assembly. “They crossed the red line.”

“We know they are a lethal nuclear power,” she added. “We’ve seen their record over the history of humanity, and we’re not afraid to confront them diplomatically.”

She also appeared to be referring to Ms. Machado when she made a swipe at opposition figures “who competed to see who could grovel the most,” while saying that if she had to go to Washington, “I will do so standing tall.”

The language fit with years of attacks against the United States by Mr. Maduro and his government. Watching only Venezuelan state television in recent days could make one think that Ms. Rodríguez was bent on confronting Mr. Trump. But in the background, there have been clear signs of cooperation.

Ms. Rodríguez’s government has been opening up Venezuela’s oil to U.S. interests, released more than 80 political prisoners and began exploring the reopening of its embassy in Washington.

“They have thus far met all of the demands,” Ms. Leavitt said Thursday.

At the same time, hundreds of political dissidents remain imprisoned, and Venezuelans report increased repression in the country, including armed men at checkpoints who search residents’ phones for signs of opposition.

Before Mr. Maduro’s capture, some White House officials, as well as a C.I.A. analysis, argued that Ms. Machado and her allies would struggle to consolidate control of Venezuela if installed as its leaders. Ms. Rodríguez, they argued, represented the most stable near-term option.

Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described a threefold plan for Venezuela. “Step one is the stabilization of the country,” he said. “We don’t want it descending into chaos.” The next steps involved securing Venezuela’s oil, followed by amnesty for the opposition. “Some of this will overlap,” he said.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly discussed Venezuela’s oil — and has hardly ever mentioned a democratic transition. On Wednesday, in a post about his call with Ms. Rodríguez, he said they had discussed “Oil, Minerals, Trade and, of course, National Security.”

“We will rebuild it in a very profitable way,” he told The New York Times last week, after saying that he envisioned the United States controlling Venezuela for “much longer” than a year. “And we’re going to be taking oil.”

When asked about elections, he repeatedly deflected. “I love democracy,” he said at one point. “I’m a big fan.”

Jack Nicas is The Times’s Mexico City bureau chief, leading coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

More on the U.S. Involvement in Venezuela

On January 3, the U.S. military seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife in a strike on Caracas, the culmination of a campaign to oust Maduro from power.

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• Cuban Citizens: Cuban national television broadcasted the return of the remains of 32 of its citizens, who were killed during the operation to capture the ousted Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro had expanded the role of Cuban bodyguards in his personal security detail and placed additional Cuban counterintelligence agents in Venezuela’s military.

• Trump’s Military Power: The Senate blocked a resolution that sought to force President Trump to seek congressional approval for any U.S. military action related to Venezuela, with G.O.P. leaders succeeding in their pressure on fellow senators who initially supported the measure.

• Judge in Maduro Case: Judge Alvin Hellerstein, 92, was previously seen drifting in and out of sleep in court. The case of Maduro will test his stamina.

• Maduro’s Enforcer: Venezuela’s interior minister is accused by U.S. prosecutors of drug trafficking and is linked to repression at home, yet remains a powerful figure in Venezuela.

• María Corina Machado Presents Trump With Her Nobel: The Venezuelan opposition leader’s efforts to share the Nobel Peace Prize with Trump have shaken some Norwegians’ faith in their signature soft-power tool.

• Political Prisoners: The United States announced that several Americans had been freed from Venezuelan jails, including a 28-year-old New Yorker who had been on an extended trip through South America after the death of his parents, his aunt said. Meanwhile, hundreds of Venezuelan families are hoping their imprisoned loved ones will be freed by their government, which has said little about who would be released or when.

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