With less than a day to go before the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the latest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Donald Trump made one last pitch, describing how impressed he was with himself.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do, really, but I know this: Nobody in history has solved eight wars in a period of nine months, and I’ve stopped eight wars,” the president told reporters at a White House event. “So, that’s never happened before. But they’ll have to do what they do.”
His boasts weren’t at all true — Trump hasn’t solved eight wars, no matter how many times he claims otherwise — and they also weren’t persuasive. My MSNBC colleague Erum Salam reported:
María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan politician, has won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, the award’s committee announced Friday. Machado is a democracy advocate and opposition leader who has built a powerful social movement despite the brutal authoritarian tactics of President Nicolás Maduro.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Machado earned the honor due to “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,” calling her “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times.”
The news no doubt disappointed Trump, who has spent months practically begging for the honor. “I’m not politicking for it,” the president said in August. It was one of his more laughable lies.
That said, Trump is only in the first year of his second term, and there’s no reason he can’t start a new campaign for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. If he’s serious about the goal, however, I have some tips the president might want to consider.
1. Abandon authoritarianism: The committee’s members have traditionally looked favorably on those who support democracy over authoritarianism, so if Trump were to abandon his anti-democratic agenda, it would almost certainly improve his odds.
2. Stop extrajudicial killings: Using the military to execute deadly strikes against civilian boats in international waters tends to be frowned upon by those who choose the Nobel Peace Prize.
3. Stop threatening Venezuela: Trump’s recent saber-rattling toward Caracas didn’t exactly scream “peacemaker.”
4. Stop trying to annex countries that don’t belong to the United States: Over the course of the year, the president has expressed unnerving interest in acquiring Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and the Gaza Strip. When authoritarian leaders start talking about annexing foreign countries and properties for no reason, it tends to get the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s attention, and not in a good way.
5. Stop praising and aligning the White House with dictatorial regimes: The more Trump cozies up to foreign tyrants and despots, the less he looks like a Nobel Peace Prize recipient. 6. Stop lying: It’s unrealistic to think the Republican will turn over a new leaf regarding the importance of honesty, but the Norwegian Nobel Committee knows full well that the American president didn’t resolve eight wars in nine months, so there’s little value to him pretending otherwise. 7. Stop militarizing American cities: No one has ever won a Nobel Peace Prize after sending armed troops into his or her own country’s civilian streets without a good reason. (While he’s at it, dropping the “Department of War” nonsense might help, too.) 8. Stop the trade war: Trump is destabilizing economies, disrupting markets, hurting farmers and shifting alliances. Undoing what he has done on trade would very likely impress the Norwegian panelists. 9. Reverse course on USAID: Trump’s cuts to the program have been deadly and brutal. Restoring the United States’ role as the pre-eminent global leader on foreign aid would dramatically improve Trump’s odds of winning a Nobel Peace Prize. (Conversely, his decision to gut the U.S. Agency for International Development made him a pariah in many parts of the world.) 10. Stop begging: Honestly, it’s unseemly to see the chief executive of a global superpower pleading in pitiful ways for an award. It’s likely the Norwegian Nobel Committee doesn’t want to be seen as caving to pressure, so Trump’s chances would likely be better if he just shut up about it.
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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