‘An indelible stain on Norway’: Trump fumes over Nobel Peace Prize snub

US President Donald Trump sharply attacked the Nobel Committee on Friday night after the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African jurist Navi Pillay, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, arguing that the prize should have gone to the United States — and effectively to him.

“Despite all of this and all of these unbelievable accomplishments, the Nobel Prize was given out today to a liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of. I’ve never heard of the person,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Syracuse, New York.

“I know a lot of people. I’ve never heard of this particular person, but congratulations anyway.”

Pillay was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize “for her efforts to promote peace and international law,” according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee. She previously served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and as a judge at the International Criminal Court, and later chaired a UN Commission of Inquiry dealing with Israel and the Palestinian territories, a body that has drawn sharp criticism from Israel.

Trump went on to argue that the United Nations had played no role in the conflicts he says he helped resolve.

“In all of the wars that I have settled, I never spoke to the United Nations. They were of no help to me,” Trump said. “The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t.”

He then directed his anger at Norway, where the Nobel Peace Prize committee is based.

“This is an indelible stain on the country of Norway and those people that made such a disgraceful and embarrassing decision,” Trump said.

“The Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilization. And we will not forget Norway.”

Trump added that the failure to give the prize to the United States was “just another sign of how Norway and all these others are ripping off our country.”

Trump repeated his claim that he had settled eight wars and said that “any one” of them could have justified a Nobel Peace Prize.

He cited, among others, India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Serbia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, as well as Israel and Hamas and Israel and Iran.
Much of his argument focused on the Middle East.

Trump said he had prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and from “blowing up the entire Middle East.”
“I stopped Iran from having a nuclear weapon and blowing up the entire Middle East, and ultimately far beyond the Middle East, including Europe, perhaps us,” he said.

He also said that “Hamas is a much different Hamas now,” before highlighting the return of Israeli hostages from Gaza.

“I got back all of the hostages in Israel, including the final 28, both living and dead,” Trump said. “And I had to work with Hamas to do it. Think of that. I had to work with Hamas. I got back all of the hostages, living and dead.”

Trump said the return of the bodies of deceased hostages was just as important to their families as the return of those who were alive.

“The parents of the dead children — they knew they were dead. They wanted the body of their child every bit as much as the parents of the living children,” he said. “And we got them all back. Nobody can believe it. Nobody thought it was possible.”
Trump concluded by returning to his own record on peace and his criticism of the Nobel process.

“Based on my record of peace — a record like no one ever has had — I’m just saying how crooked the whole Nobel Prize deal is,” he said.