Nobel Committee Warns That Peace Prize Cannot Be Shared or Transferred amid Trump’s Meddling: ‘The Decision Is Final’

After Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she wanted to “give” her Nobel Peace Prize to President Donald Trump, the Nobel Committee issued a firm reminder: a Nobel Prize stays with the person who receives it.

The topic came up during a sit-down interview between Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity. Hannity told the president that Machado, 58, had said she “wants to give” Trump her Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump, 79, didn’t offer a direct yes-or-no when asked whether he would accept it — an honor he had repeatedly campaigned for before Machado was awarded the prize in October. But the Nobel Committee emphasized that his response wouldn’t change the outcome.

Once a Nobel Prize is awarded, it “cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others,” according to a news release posted on the Nobel Peace Prize’s website on Friday, Jan. 9.

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee and the Norwegian Nobel Institute receive a number of requests for comments regarding the permanence of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s status,” the release continued.

It added that the rule is straightforward and long-standing: once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred — and the decision is permanent.

During the interview, Hannity also asked whether Trump planned to meet with Machado and whether he would accept the Nobel Prize if she tried to give it to him.

“Well, I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her. And I’ve heard that she wants to do that,” Trump said. “That would be a great honor.”

Machado was awarded the Nobel Prize for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela” and “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

In a Jan. 4 report by The Washington Post, sources said Machado’s decision to accept the award may have damaged her prospects of becoming Venezuela’s next leader after the capture of President Nicolás Maduro.

Asked about Machado after Maduro’s capture in the early hours of Jan. 3, Trump said “it’d be very tough for her to be” Venezuela’s leader. He added that she “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.”

Despite Machado dedicating the award to Trump — who has repeatedly argued he deserves the prize for negotiating solutions to multiple “unendable wars” — one White House source told the Post that accepting it was viewed inside the administration as a major political mistake.

The source suggested that if she had refused the prize and publicly framed it as belonging to Trump, she would have been Venezuela’s president by now.