Meanwhile, in North Korea…
...a gift for Dear Leader.
So, Nobel Laureate Maria Corina Machado, Venezuelan opposition leader, provided Trump with a very fancy participation trophy, as per ABC News: Trump accepts Nobel Peace Prize medal from Venezuelan opposition leader Machado.
In a general sense, I am sympathetic to the fact that Machado is hoping to leverage this gift to get Trump to continue to put pressure on the current regime in Venezuela, but it all seems like empty flattery and poor politics in practical terms. Trump has publicly rejected Machado herself as having any role in a post-Maduro Venezuela and has left the regime intact. Further, Trump continues to signal that all he cares about is oil in Venezuela, not the removal of the legacy regime originally installed by Hugo Chávez.
Meanwhile, all of this just continues to reveal Trump’s character (or lack thereof), as Philip Bump rightly noted on Bluesky:
Cuz, ya know, Dear Leader likes his bright shiny objects!
I certainly wouldn’t count on someone who would post something like this:
********************@
Do you figure El Taco demanded the cash award as well?
The pressure campaign to force the nobel committee to change the whiner to the felon begins in 3,2,1…
It is deeply, deeply funny to imagine the (almost certain) fate of Machado in 3 years, walking around her house alone because she’s under house arrest by the new regime, just sans peace prize.
Dukes of Hazzard narrator: “Now you might be wondering how I got here…”
This is like someone who buys a piece of sports memorabilia, say a Superbowl Championship ring (OJ’s), then claims to be a Superbowl winner. That isn’t how it works.
@Neil Hudelson: Or as the Talking Heads lyric went:
Machado: Nobel Prize Winner
Trump: Nobel Prize Whiner
Looks like Machado read Dr. Spock on how to deal with hard-to-babysit kids.
Not to mention standing in front of the Declaration of Independence while presenting a gift to a king to court his favor. Wtf? Lol.
“To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:”
Read those that follow in the Declaration and you can pretty much apply them all to our current King. 2nd coming 250 years later! Yikes.