Ordinarily Democrats would be falling all over themselves to honor and praise Maria Corina Machado.

She is the brave opposition leader challenging Venezuelan leftist dictator Nicolas Maduro. Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize over President Donald Trump.

Machado, 58, arrived in Oslo, Norway just hours after the award ceremony a week ago after secretly leaving Venezuela, where she was wanted and where she was in hiding. Her daughter Ana Corina Sosa accepted the award in her absence.

Machado, a leader in the opposition to Maduro, had been in hiding following Maduro’s brutal crackdown on protesters following the last contested election that Maduro, who counted the votes, “won.”

Machado’s journey in disguise from her hideout outside of Caracas to the island of Curacao in the Dutch Caribbean to Bangor, Maine and on to Oslo was something of which blockbuster novels or action films are made.

She was luckier than fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi who was rearrested and jailed in Iran at the same time while attending a memorial ceremony.

Mohammadi was awarded the prize in 2023 for fighting for women’s rights in the theocratic dictatorship.

Democrat Trump haters earlier relished the fact Machado had nosed out Trump for the award after Trump boasted about ending a series of wars across the globe, including a halt in the fighting in Gaza.

The left wing cheering for Machado came to a halt, however, when leftists, including women’s groups, realized that she was not a fellow progressive in the mold of Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren, but a Trump-admiring conservative Catholic and mother of three.

Were she an American she would fit nicely in Trump’s Cabinet alongside Kristi Noem.

Unlike Machado, Trump’s problem was that he appeared to lobby publicly for the prize and expected to get it.

After all, if President Barack Obama got it for doing nothing, then surely Trump would get it for doing something.

But it was not to be.

Instead, he was snubbed, which pleased his critics.

But Trump being Trump, he made up for it by winning the inaugural peace prize award by FIFA during the World Cup draw in Washington.

As prestigious as the FIFA award might be, it is no Nobel Prize, nor did it have the $1 million grant that goes along with the award.

But for Trump the Nobel financial prize was only walking around money anyway. He’s got enough cash.

What he wants is recognition for his amazing accomplishments in saving lives by bringing peace to troubled regions around the world, and now for halting the criminal drug activity of the Maduro regime and freeing the Venezuelan people from a nasty dictatorship.

But he won’t get that recognition from the progressives. They are so blinded by Trump hate that they are on the verge of supporting dictator and drug dealer Maduro simply because Trump opposes him.

Machado is wiser than all of them because she knows what it means to live in a socialist police state that is Venezuela, and they don’t.

Which is why she supports Trump’s aggressive actions in taking out Maduro’s drug boats and seizing a sanctioned oil tanker.

She also supports Trump’s strategy on Venezuela, like a U.S. invasion to topple Maduro. Asked about it in Oslo, she said, “Venezuela has already been invaded” by agents of Russia, Iran Hamas and Hezbollah.

While her invasion comments are music to Trump’s ears it is good she said them after she won the peace prize and not before.

She’s ready to replace Maduro.

Peter Lucas can be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com

President Donald Trump stands on stage after receiving the FIFA Peace Prize during the draw for the 2026 soccer World Cup at the Kennedy Center in Washington earlier this month. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)