At a White House late last week, a reporter reminded Donald Trump, “The Norwegian Nobel Committee will make their announcement as it relates to this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, October 10.” The reporter then asked the president, “Is that date circled on your calendar?”
As part of the Republican’s answer, he replied, “I’m not politicking for it.”
No, of course not. Perish the thought. It’s not as if the White House, just a few days after the president said he wasn’t lobbying for the honor, released a list of foreign officials who’ve nominated him for the award alongside a picture of Trump and the medal. Wait, actually, that’s exactly what happened.
President Donald J. Trump is the President of PEACE. pic.twitter.com/7ZH5hKHLVI
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 12, 2025
The post was ridiculous, but it was part of a larger effort. White House officials and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have called on the Nobel committee to reward Trump; foreign leaders eager to curry favor with the American president have nominated him for the honor; he’s repeatedly complained about not having already received the award and Trump has publicly listed reasons that he believes “they should give me the Nobel Prize.”
NBC News reported this week, “Any whiff of indifference is now gone. … Trump and his aides are intensifying a public campaign to snag the award.”
But don’t worry: The president has already assured the public that he’s “not politicking for it.”
The question isn’t whether the comment was foolish, since it obviously was. Rather, the question is just how far the White House is prepared to go to lobby for an honor that Trump has been desperate to receive for many years. It was against this backdrop that Politico reported: U.S. President Donald Trump called Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg out of the blue last month to discuss trade tariffs — as well as his bid to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The call was first reported by Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv on Thursday and was later confirmed to Politico by a government official in Oslo. This was not the first time Trump had raised the prize in discussions with Stoltenberg, Dagens Næringsliv noted. The reporting has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, and the White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. For his part, Stoltenberg confirmed on the record that Trump did call him, but said in a statement that he would not “go into further detail about the content of the conversation.” The official announcement is 56 days away. I shudder to think how much the campaign will intensify between now and then.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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