Neither House Speaker Mike Johnson nor his party seem to have any credible ideas on how to stem the economic crisis Donald Trump has spurred with his destructive tariff war, and they seem similarly stumped on how to solve the self-inflicted crisis of skyrocketing health care costs they created by refusing to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.
But fret not, Americans, the speaker is locked in on the issues that matter to his constituents: stroking the president’s ego by lobbying foreign leaders to support a bid to award him next year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
The speaker posted a photo of himself sitting alongside the speaker of Israel’s Knesset, Amir Ohana, to soft launch that joint cheerleading effort.
A press release from Johnson’s office on Tuesday said he and Ohana plan to “rally Speakers and Presidents of Parliaments around the world to join them in nominating President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2026.”
Johnson appears to think the “peace prize” bauble that FIFA gave Trump at last week’s bizarre World Cup drawing ceremony wasn’t sufficient acknowledgement of the president’s purported diplomacy. So he and Ohana officially kicked off their effort with a letter to the Nobel Committee, claiming, “Few, if any, have done more in history to advance the cause of peace — and none are more worthy of this honor.” Trump himself has claimed to have brought peace to several regions across the world through his purported deal-making skills. But as TIME reported this week, conflict has raged on in several of the regions where Trump has falsely claimed to have settled feuds and ongoing wars. The speakers’ letter references several of these conflicts Trump has falsely claimed to have ended, including deadly fighting between Thailand and Cambodia, between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda and, perhaps most notably, the war between Israel and Hamas. Meanwhile, just this year, Trump’s efforts to “advance the cause of peace” have included declaring “war” on American cities; an illegal, potentially criminal, campaign by his administration to blow up boats in international waters; a bombing campaign in Yemen; and what appear to have been largely ineffective military strikes on Iran. Only this week, as part of continued saber-rattling against Venezuela, Trump touted the seizure of one of its oil tankers, going on to say the U.S. intends to “keep the oil.”
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
