Last week, the Nobel Committee awarded its highly anticipated 2025 Peace Prize. It was not given to President Trump, who wanted it badly and touted his eligibility for the prize repeatedly.

Trump claimed, with substantial justification, to have resolved several long-running political or military conflicts around the world, the most dangerous of which was that between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed states. (The historic breakthrough in the Mideast happened after the Nobel decision was made.)

The recipient of the prize was María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan dissident who has bravely fought the corrupt dictatorships of Nicolás Maduro and Hugo Chávez before him. She is currently in hiding, but her candidate was clearly cheated out of the 2024 election as confirmed by election day records and independent international observers. Disappointed and deserving as he may be, Trump should refrain from ungracious recriminations against the Nobel Committee or demeaning Machado.

Instead, he should offer congratulations and praise her valiant fight against the Venezuelan tyrant whom Trump also wants to throw out of office. It would be an opportune time for him to start aligning his views with the world’s human rights and democracy heroes, as most American presidents have done and as Trump himself did in 2007 and 2008, when he lambasted Kim Jong Un for his brutal oppression of the North........

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