The Very Simple Reason Trump Didn’t Win the Nobel Peace Prize
It's a simple matter of eligibility.
With a tenuous ceasefire and prisoner exchange set to begin in the Gaza Strip, there is reason to believe that we are finally bringing one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world right now to an end.
Veteran Israeli analysts have largely given the credit to U.S. President Donald Trump, who they say was more serious about striking a deal than either former President Joe Biden or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ever were.
It’s no secret that Trump covets the Nobel Peace Prize, and you could make an argument that if this ceasefire holds he is deserving of one. Standing up to Israeli interests in American politics is always politically fraught, and Trump seemed to bring pressure to bear that his predecessor didn’t.
But this morning the committee decided to instead award that honor to María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader.
This angered some backers of Trump, including White House Communications Director Steven Cheung who accused the committee of putting “politics over peace.”
But there’s a very simple reason Trump did not win the prize this year: he wasn’t eligible. The nomination deadline for the prize was in January 2025. Trump had only been in office a couple weeks when the deadline hit.
When the government of Pakistan nominated Trump for the prize earlier this year — a transparent move aimed at currying favor for him after his intervention into the brief India-Pakistan war — they were nominating him for the 2026 Nobel prize.
So did the prize committee really snub Trump? Obviously not. He just wasn’t eligible yet.
But if the peace in the Middle East expands and holds, there’s always next year.
And here I figured he didn't get it because we have to know if the peace will hold, and because he's transparently used overtures for peace as covers for attacks (or at least he's helped Israel to do so). Also because it would be hard to stomach giving the man the prize for peace when he's had it in his power to stop both the Ukraine War and the Israel War on a dime, but he refused and refuses to do so. And then there was the bombing of Iran and the Houthis and the Venezuelans . . .
It would rather be an insult to give him the prize really, even relatively speaking.
And I'm not a "woke lib," just a tired lib. Call me crazy, but ordering the deaths of innocent people in an apartment building so you can get some Houthi weapons guy should disqualify you.
But then again, they gave it to Obama for not being Bush and didn't take it back when he turned Libya into a hellhole with actual slave markets, so . . . what really are the standards? It's sort of like the Oscars these days. I don't know what they're about except that they're not about actual substance.
Stop being rational! ;)