The Nobel peace prize nominations closed out on Jan. 31 this year, meaning, it's a red herring to have expected that President Trump, the indisputable winner on the making-peace front, would or should have gotten it instead. We will see about that next year.

But the person who did get it, Venezuela's Maria Corina Machado, is a spectacularly worthy winner.

I've known her since 2005 when on my first trip to Caracas, I heard of her work combatting election fraud as the chief of an NGO called Sumate to promote free and fair elections, and I wanted to meet her. My Venezuelan friends arranged it and it happened.

I found her sharp, fearless, focused, kind, unselfish, and incorruptible, a truly great leader even then.

She had been threatened by Chavista thugs then and I was a little apprehensive about going meet her at her office near a Caracas mall. She spoke of threats coming over the phone at times and we departed from it shortly after to go walking on rain-slicked streets as we spoke, the better to avoid government bugs.

And she is still being threatened by Chavistas now, far more dangerously.

I wrote about her last September here, in response to President Trump's war on narcoboats:

Google Translation:

#URGENT | Direct threat from Diosdado Cabello against María Corina due to the US offensive: "If they squeeze us, we squeeze her. Don't think that they're going to attack us here and you're going to come out unscathed. No, that doesn't exist."

Which tells us all we need to know about who they are, and what their Hamas-like system of ethics is. Not only does this resemble what their allies Hamas would do, it resembles the kind of response Pablo Escobar had when he knew the lawmen were coming for him.

This dirtbag, whose title is "Minister for the Popular Power for Interior, Justice, and Peace of Venezuela," meaning, internal goon squad commander, is about as high-ranking a Chavista figure there can be outside Maduro, and for many years, has been accused of being the arch-kingpin of the Sun Cartel, the drug lords who rule Venezuela. He was Hugo Chavez's best friend, except that even Hugo didn't trust him, often sending him to the hinterlands as governor of this or that state to get him away from the Caracas Chavista power circles where he would undoubtedly plot. He must have used his time well in the outback, establishing drug and guerrilla routes over the years.

Now, instead of saying he had no idea drugs were dealt in Venezuela, he screams about his lost allies, meaning, they were his allies in the drug trade, and vows to take Maria Corina Machado hostage if Trump doesn't stop taking out his drug boats.

Yet against that, Machado's still in Venezuela, courageously living in hiding.

She's an engineer by trade, speaks perfect English, is devoutly Catholic, and was educated in the U.S.

More important, she hates corruption, has never been tainted by it, despises Maduro and all his socialists, and even told me she liked President Bush, which I did not expect her to say. Bush at the time had hosted her in the White House a few weeks before we met, and the left reviled her for having such a good time with him, calling her a pawn of America, a CIA agent, and all the things they thought were insulting. But she never flinched.

Remember this?

Since then, she has grown her political profile, persisted, persisted, persisted in her democracy fight, leading massive demonstrations, persisted when it all looked hopeless. She wasn't interested in elected office when I met her, but several years later got elected to legislative office and was assaulted on the legislative floor, where Chavista thugs literally beat her so hard they broke her nose. She kept at it.

Maddest of props to
Maria Corina Machado ????????
for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. ✊????https://t.co/lvhGeV1IjF pic.twitter.com/Za19vhTxuG

— Jeremy, Writer & Dad & Collector of Parks (@JeremyWingert79) October 10, 2025

Then she ran for president where she led by a massive majority in the polls, and was soon disqualified by Chavistas for this reason.

Rather than giving up and moving to Spain, as many Venezuelans do, she stayed, continuing to expose corruption, and in 2024 named Edmundo Gonzalez, a kindly old retired diplomat, as her successor, campaigning alongside him all the way, and of course, they won that election by a spectacular 80-20 margin, which was nakedly stolen by Maduro and his dirty election machine.

Not to worry, though -- she was ready for the Maduroite thievery and managed to figure out how to prove irrefutably that the election had been stolen, ready for them at the pass and catching them unawares, and thus, was able to convince the West that the election was pure Chavista garbage. Everyone knew who won.

Since then, she has loudly supported President Trump's war on the narcodictatorship, and has always been a good friend of the U.S. and just now, on her day of glory, she released a tweet of roaring praise for President Trump, dedicating her prize to him:

This recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans is a boost to conclude our task: to conquer Freedom.

We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic…

— María Corina Machado (@MariaCorinaYA) October 10, 2025

This:

I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!

Trump had kind words for her, back in January, too.

President Trump on María Corina Machado in January 2025, just two weeks before nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize closed. pic.twitter.com/BsVGJO0LqQ

— Yashar Ali ???? (@yashar) October 10, 2025

Meanwhile, the left -- and intriguingly Russian propaganda outlet RT News -- is still insulting and abusing her, the Russians apparently desperate to keep Maduro in power -- while the left has always hated her. Some are giggling that she won it and he didn't, unaware that he was not in the running. It's fascinating to see them stand up and be counted.

The New York Times disgraced itself too, not giving her the time of day:

Hey @nytimes, yes, it’s the same person you dodged interviewing just days ago, choosing instead to amplify the narco-regime that’s been hounding her for decades. https://t.co/l8r3G3MjLs

— Emmanuel Rincón (@EmmaRincon) October 10, 2025

But here is a demonstration of how good she is -- the Scandis decided to record the phone call of Maria Corina hearing that she had won the Nobel peace prize -- she put herself last in this long battle, which is now on the cusp of victory -- listen to this exchange which she probably didn't know was being recorded:

"This is an achievement of the whole of society ..." - her first words. https://t.co/oUrMSPDk0b

— Juan Nagel (@juannagel) October 10, 2025

Such a humble response, saying it belonged to the Venezuelan people, much the same way Charlie Kirk said it was never about him.

The irony here is that Trump himself may make actual peace in Venezuela by ousting the entrenched tyrant Maduro. But Maria Corina laid the groundwork for it. Her prize should have been given to her years ago, but she was fighting socialism, and they were handing out prizes to frauds like Barack Obama, or a group of global warmers, or a tree planter somewhere in Africa, so no prize for her.

Now that Trump has cleared the coast and Maria Corina has exposed election fraud, the Nobel committee had to give it to her. There was no other way.

Trump will finish the job of restoring peace and Venezuela will finally be free. That will be one more war he's ended, and raise the total for the Nobel committee when it votes on it next year.

Image: X screen shot