There’s a FIFA World Cup trophy in the Oval Office. Trump has it, but he didn’t win it. He was given the FIFA Peace Prize, a prize for which there were no rules or conditions, no other potential recipients, and invented solely to stroke Trump’s wounded ego for not having been given the Nobel Peace Prize, which he has made clear he wants desperately.
The 2025 Prize was given to Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado, who didn’t refuse the prize in favor of Trump. According to people within Trump’s White House, this is why Machado isn’t president of Venezuela after Trump removed Maduro. But Machado is coming to the United States and wants to meet with Trump. Trump wants to meet with her too, because she has something he wants. And she can give it to him the easy way or the hard way.
Trump, 79, is due to host Nobel laureate María Corina Machado in the Oval Office next week, amid a public and behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to have Machado hand her prize to Trump, both to appease the president and to encourage him to endorse her as a replacement for deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Trump went into his now-familiar riff about his peace credentials, boasting, “I’ve stopped eight wars” and calling it “a very big embarrassment” that he hadn’t been given the prize. He argued that “when you put out eight wars, in theory, you should get one for each war.”
There is a difference between Machado and Trump, made apparent by this transaction. She will give Trump her Nobel Prize because she loves her country. Trump will accept it because he loves himself. And shiny things. Trump just loves shiny things, especially shiny prizes like the plaque given him by Apple CEO Tim Cook with a 24-karat gold base for no apparent reason other than to buy Trump’s transitory mercy. Cook is a smart fellow, realizing how little it would take to stroke Trump. Machado is a smart woman, realizing that the future of her country could depend on handing Trump a gold medal that he wanted so desperately but was not given.
Trump: I can’t think of anybody in history who should get the Nobel prize more than me…
*Ten Minutes Later*
Trump on Acquiring Greenland: If we do not do it the easy way, we will do it the hard way. pic.twitter.com/XZzmIVYIJe
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 9, 2026
It appears likely, if not certain, the Machado will hand Trump her Nobel Peace Prize, which will give that prize far greater meaning than its predecessors. Whether obtained by force, coercion or extortion, it was not awarded Trump. Rather than a prize for Peace, it will be a symbol of dishonor, a shiny prize that will forever represent what was never awarded Trump.
Machado can hand Trump the physical prize, a large, round gold medal, and even turn over the million dollar award money, as it’s hers to do with as she pleases. But she cannot award Trump anything, and Trump cannot award it to himself. If and when it happens, it will likely be placed on the table behind the Resolute Desk, maybe next to the FIFA World Cup trophy and Tim Cooks gold plaque of no meaning whatsoever, a monument to the shiny things Trump loves but never earned.
The United States has the military might to conquer Greenland. To Trump and his muse, Stephen Miller, that is the new world order, the powerful can take what they want and there is nothing the weak can do to stop them. But he will never be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, no matter where the shiny prize resides.
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While it pains me to compare Trump with Elvis (another figure some would have made king), this mania for recognition parallels EP’s in his last years. Some may recall Elvis’s obsessive quest to obtain police badges, and as I recall he went to the Oval Office and embarassed Nixon into more or less handing him an FBI badge (surrounded by his own toadies, of course). What does it mean? Elvis was a deeply disturbed and sick man in his last days. Had he access to nukes, the world may have looked much different today (I.e. like the surface of the moon). It would be a wonderful time for Congress to bestir itself on behalf of the country it purportedly serves. Usual caveats about whether anything is even actionable at this point are ruefully assumed.
I can’t even imagine the level of pettiness one would have to have to do something like this. Also, he is in his second term as president of the United States. How desperate for validation and recognition can one be?
I cannot fathom how a man could walk into the Oval Office every day, knowing he was twice elected by the people of the United States, and feel inadequate. What a putz.
Well, remember, he’s really smart too, so he knows things that might not be apparent to us.
Why can’t he award the Nobel Prize to himself? Don’t you remember the famous painting of Napoleon taking the crown rom the hands of the Pope and declaring himself Emperor of the French? There is a precedent. And Napoleon too liked a lot of gold, lots of gold, lots of medals, lots of gold medals.
Oh, as an aside I note Napoleon’s grand failure. (No, no this decision to invade Russia), his failure to seize Greenland! Our Napoleon will not make the same mistake. He will continue to harass, threaten and cajole Denmark on the Greenland question. Will Denmark capitulate? If Our Emperor can achieve the annexation of Greenland without having to fire a sot, they will have to award him the Nobel Peace Prize. He can donate the million dollar prize to the Trump Mausoleum Fund. He is 79 after all, and it takes a lot of money to build a pyramid. Will there be a casino in this pyramid like Luxor in Las Vegas? Napoleon didn’t have that, did he? Greenland is the key, Greenland. It’s all so obvious.
“This is beyond narcissism. I used to think Trump was an 11-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value — indeed exists — only insofar as it sustains and inflates him … (He) is dangerously out of the mainstream and temperamentally unfit to command the nation.”
Charles Krauthammer, psychiatrist and conservative columnist, deceased