Analysis
Trump, the Nobel Peace Prize loser, rants and thanks Putin
In public, Trump has always shifted back and forth between determined bluster and preemptive victimhood on the prospects of winning the prize.
On Friday, Donald Trump’s disappointed silence about the Nobel Peace Prize announcement was only interrupted by a heartfelt thank you to the Russian president: “Thank you, President Putin!” he wrote on Truth Social, commenting on a video in which Putin tells reporters that Trump had every qualification to win the coveted prize and claims that the Nobel Committee had delegitimized the award by giving it in the past to people “who have done nothing for peace.”
But while Trump himself was initially silent – chasing down the bitter pill with a barrage of posts about the indictment he ordered against New York Attorney General Letitia James – his allies spoke for him. “The President will continue to make peace deals, end wars, and save lives,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung wrote on X. “The Nobel Committee proved they put politics over peace.”
Trump couldn’t directly attack the winner, María Corina Machado – a choice many saw as a gesture of appeasement toward the White House – and he limited himself to reposting her victory tweet, in which she said she “counts on” him and the “people of the United States.”
The vitriol was left to the MAGA influencers, starting with Trump’s “informal” advisor Laura Loomer. “It is pathetic to see US Members of Congress (especially Republicans) congratulating a Venezuelan woman for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Get a grip. The only person who deserves that award is President Trump!” she posted. “It's embarrassing that any US official would nominate a Venezuelan over an American hero,” she concluded, referring to Senator Rick Scott and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had supported Machado’s nomination.
For himself, Trump could boast a series of high-profile nominations from figures like the head of the Pakistani military, the prime minister of Cambodia Hun Manet, Argentinian president Javier Milei, and, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu, who obsequiously offered up an endorsement of his candidature at their meeting in July.
In public, Trump has always shifted back and forth between determined bluster and preemptive victimhood on the prospects of winning the prize. Speaking to 800 senior military officers in Virginia a few days ago, he declared, “It would be a great insult to our country if I didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize.” But speaking to Netanyahu in February, he was more fatalistic: “They will never give me the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s a real shame, but they’ll never give it to me.”
On Wednesday, in front of reporters at the White House, he seemed to be in a rueful mood: “We have resolved seven wars. We are close to resolving the eighth… I don't think anyone in history has resolved so many, but maybe they'll find a reason not to give it to me,” he said, trying to appear stoic. But everyone knows the Nobel has been his obsession, to the point of becoming a running joke in European chancelleries. A month ago, the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv reported that while former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was walking down a street in Oslo, he received an unexpected call from Trump, who said “he wanted the Nobel Peace Prize... and to talk about tariffs.”
A great deal has been written about the origin of Trump’s fixation on this award: namely, his obsession with his predecessor, Barack Obama. “If my name was Obama, they’d give me the Nobel Prize in about seven seconds,” he once said during a campaign rally. In a comic-book retelling, Obama – who won the Nobel Peace Prize in his first year as president – is the key figure in the origin story of this supervillain of American history, dating back to the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where Obama humiliated Trump over his support of the birther conspiracy.
But this is now Trump’s dystopian world, in which he reaps the “success” of muscular posturing in the Middle East and brings the same approach to every conflict. On the same day, he was back to threatening “huge tariffs” on a “very hostile” China, after Beijing imposed new restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/il-giorno-dello-scontento-di-trump-grazie-solo-a-vladimir-putin on 2025-10-11