Venezuelan Interior Minister and long-suspected drug lord Diosdado Cabello claimed on Wednesday that anti-socialist opposition leader María Corina Machado “bought” her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.
The interior minister and regime henchman, without presenting any evidence that could demonstrate his accusations, claimed that Machado allegedly offered prospective Venezuelan gas deals to Norwegian businessmen in exchange for the award.
Cabello further claimed, also without evidence, that Machado receiving the award is part of a purported “revenge plot” by President Donald Trump and “the Cuban-American clan,” allegedly led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, against Venezuela. Cabello has threatened Rubio’s life in the past, according to U.S. intelligence.
Cabello levied his wild accusations during the latest broadcast of Hitting with the Mallet, a weekly socialist talk show in which he frequently scorns the “enemies” of the rogue regime, ranging from politicians, dissidents, and journalists to others. Like dictator Nicolás Maduro, Cabello is actively wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narco-terrorism charges and has an active $25 million bounty out for information that can lead to his arrest and/or conviction.
The interior minister delivered his accusations by reading from a letter allegedly penned by a “cooperating patriot,” a tactic often used by Cabello to attack individuals and make false assertions on his show using the excuse that the “information” allegedly came not from him, but rather, an unidentified spy or whistleblower loyal to the ruling socialists. Cabello, who leads the Maduro regime’s brutally repressive apparatus, is the topmost user of the “cooperating patriot” tactic.
“That lousy Marco Rubio is playing to leave blondie Trump in the dust. And that Nobel Peace Prize they gave Cori [Machado] is nothing more than revenge by the Cuban-American clan against Trump,” Cabello claimed, reading from the “letter.”
“Now comes the best part of this story. It turns out that Cori owes this Nobel Prize to money from ExxonMobil and Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza,” he continued. “Although he is related to [Leopoldo Lopez, exiled Venezuelan politician] Crazy Leo, since 2023, the lousy Thor began to play it safe with Cori when he saw that his cousin was a disaster.”
Cabello further identified Halvorssen as a Norwegian-Venezuelan businessman at the “far-right” Oslo Freedom Forum. In reality, Halvorssen is a human rights activist and the head of the Human Rights Foundation. According to Cabello, who cited the “information” from the purported “cooperating patriot’s letter,” Halvorssen “lobbied” in Norway to have Machado awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize with the intent to enter into prospective Venezuelan gas deals.
Cabello further claimed that Machado owes the award to the money of American oil company ExxonMobil, a company that has been repeatedly threatened by the Maduro regime in recent years.
“This won’t be the first time Exxon has won a Nobel Prize under the table, as it has been linked in the past to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and its strategic importance for the development of products offered by Exxon in its portfolio,” Cabello said. “God, I see this and all I can think about is poor Trump. Everyone has betrayed him, I can’t believe it.”
Cabello did not detail exactly what role Exxon supposedly played in the award or the relationship between the oil company and the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Cabello’s Wednesday broadcast marked his first show after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Machado the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize last week for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
Cabello mocked the Nobel Peace Prize, branding it as the “Mercado Libre Peace Prize,” referencing the name of a regional multi-national online marketplace.
“Yes, you read that right, the Nobel Peace Prize is whatever, now you can even buy it on a website. And that’s why my friend Cori is so sad, so much effort to buy the prize only to end up worse off than she was before,” Cabello said, reading from the purported “letter.”
Machado, who remains in hiding at an undisclosed location in Venezuela since mid-2024, dedicated her award to President Donald Trump for his decisive support of the Venezuelan cause for freedom. In a Friday interview with CBS News, Machado explained that she thinks it is fair to dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize to President Trump because of “what he has done, not only for the region, but for the world regarding freedom, democracy, and peace.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award Machado the Nobel Peace Prize appears to have greatly infuriated the Venezuelan socialist regime. Dictator Nicolás Maduro, who had Machado banned from running for public office until 2030, called her a “demonic witch” during a weekend event commemorating the regime’s “Day of Indigenous Resistance and Decolonization of the Americas,” a made-up “holiday” specifically imposed on Venezuela in 2002 to erase the country’s decades-long official iteration of Columbus Day.
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“But she was very sure that when she was announced as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, people would take to the streets to celebrate and cheer her inauguration as president,” Cabello, citing the “letter,” said during the broadcast. “I mean, how can I explain it to you? But Cori didn’t lose hope, because she was very sure that she would become a global trend when they announced the Nobel Prize.”
“And she was right, although the truth is that she was trending because of the dirty trick she played on Trump and the MAGAs,” he continued. “Also because of the rejection she has received from important figures around the world, because of the memes made about her, and because of the barrage of criticism that is still raining down on her.”
Cabello has repeatedly threatened to retaliate against Machado for her support of American sanctions and political pressure against the Maduro regime, and has made extensive use of his show to deride Machado throughout the years, branding her as La Sayona, the name of a Venezuelan urban legend from the mid–19 century. Since then, the Maduro regime now uses La Sayona to refer to Machado in a derogatory manner.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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