Nobel Committee Snubs Trump for an Ostensible Trump Ally

By Jacob Weindling  |  October 10, 2025 | 10:25am
Photo by ProtoplasmaKid
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Nobel Committee Snubs Trump for an Ostensible Trump Ally

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of those things that has far more salience than it should, but people like Donald Trump still see a trophy with cultural reach and they want it. Trump has been sweatily stumping to be handed a prize he hasn’t earned, something that does seem preposterous but would put him alongside winners like Barack Obama. “I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments,” said a confused Barack Obama in 2009 while accepting his Nobel Peace Prize. “But rather an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.” The fact that Henry Kissinger has a Nobel Peace Prize, but Mahatma Gandhi does not, demonstrates how hollow this award is. I had a friend this morning call it an equivalent to Time’s Person of the Year and he’s not wrong.

But Trump, a man who has proven he will steal trophies he has not earned, could care less. He wants, nay, needs, the Nobel Peace Prize. He sees a shiny prize awarded to people the world respects and his deep need to have someone, anyone, tell them they love him comes out whenever trophies do. Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly told a story about how in 2008, “Trump played a golf scramble w/ Clinton, Bloomberg + Giuliani. They lost. Trump decided he ‘won’ the ‘low net individual.’ no such thing. demanded a trophy. they found a flower vase, tossed the buds, dried it and gave it to him. Don made a 12 minute speech.”

Trump undoubtedly had similar plans to give an even longer speech about his supposed greatness today, but was snubbed by the Nobel committee. As much as Trump schadenfreude is a currency on the left, I don’t think liberals dunking on him want to go too far in hailing the Nobel committee’s selection for the peace prize. If you find yourself reacting like this today, you should do some cursory research on Maria Colina Machado, the woman who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the Henry Kissinger fanboy committee.

I like how they gave the Nobel Prize to someone fighting for democracy in Venezuela, instead of someone sinking fishing boats off their coast.

— John Collins (@logicallyjc.bsky.social) October 10, 2025 at 5:58 AM

Machado once described Trump as a “visionary,” and she supports his attacks on fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela. Machado has previously said she is in close contact with Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and clearly sees cozying up to Trump as part of her project to bring democracy to Venezuela. Machado is getting awarded the Nobel because she has stood up to the authoritarian regime run by Nicolás Maduro, but her naked appeals to Trump and approval of his extrajudicial killings demonstrate how peace is not exactly the animating principle at the core of her politics.

We frankly should have stopped caring about Nobel Peace Prize winners after they gave one to Obama in 2009 for giving good speeches. That he even was like ‘what the hell’ when he got it proves how out of touch the Nobel committee is. In fact, the Nobel Peace Prize destroyed its reputation long ago when it was awarded to a man who orchestrated a genocide and was famous for saying in a leaked State Department cable, “the illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” There are countless people who won this award who did not deserve it, and I detailed nine of them in a blog in 2017 for Paste Politics. This is nothing new. In that sense, Trump does have a legitimate gripe today, because a long time ago Henry Kissinger established the precedent that you can be wholly opposed to the project of peace and still be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

 
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