The chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee addressed Donald Trump‘s desperate attempts to get the Peace Prize after awarding the honor to a democracy activist on Friday.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes defended the committee’s choice to give the 2025 prize to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado over Trump, who had pushed for the award for himself.
“During the past months, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and he’d like to have it. He even said it would be an insult to the United States if he doesn’t get it,” a reporter said to Frydnes at the announcement ceremony in Oslo.
“What [do you], as chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, think of this? And how has this campaign-like activity by the president and his supporters, domestically and internationally, affected the deliberation and thinking in the committee?”
Frydnes responded: “In the long history of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think this committee has seen many types of campaign, media attention. We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what, for them, leads to peace.”
He added: “This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee separately said Machado was chosen “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.”
The White House reacted to the news, with a top aide saying Trump “will continue making peace deals around the world, ending wars, and saving lives.”
“He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,’ Steven Cheung, White House Director of Communications, said in a post on X.
“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for additional comment.
Trump has long vied for the prize. He bragged on Thursday that he has solved multiple conflicts when asked about his chances of winning this year’s award.
“I know this, that nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months. And I’ve stopped eight wars. So that’s never happened before,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “They’ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine. I know this, I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I saved a lot of lives.”
And hours before the Nobel Peace Prize winner was announced, Trump fired off a flurry of posts on Truth Social, linking to articles and videos that backed him for the honor.
He is likely all the more bitter that his nemesis, former President Barack Obama, was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, just eight months into his tenure in the White House.
“They gave Obama the Nobel Prize. He didn’t even know why the hell he got it, right? He still doesn’t,” Trump scoffed at a rally in Las Vegas last year. “He got elected, and they announced he’s getting the Nobel Prize. I got elected in a much bigger, better, crazier election, but they gave him the Nobel Prize,” he told a rally in Las Vegas last year.
He returned to the grudge on Thursday. “They gave it to Obama for doing absolutely nothing but destroying our country,” Trump told reporters.
Several of Trump’s prominent MAGA supporters reacted bitterly to the news that the president didn’t get the 2025 award.
Conservative activist Laura Loomer blasted Machado’s win as “affirmative action nonsense.” “What an absolute joke. Everyone knows President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize,” she wrote on X.
Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller, reacted by grumbling about Obama’s win. “President Obama was given a Nobel months into his Presidency without ending any wars. President Trump has now ended EIGHT wars,” she wrote on X, adding, “POLITICS OVER PEACE.”
