There are injustices in life that shake the very foundations of faith in humanity – a puppy not adopted, a Goan road repaired just before the rains, or the one that beats them all: Donald Trump not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Yes, that golden medallion of global goodness slipped through his fingers, even though he all but polished a space for it on his already crowded shelf of self-love.
Now, let’s be fair to the man. Trump did everything a Nobel Peace Prize aspirant could possibly do – short of actually bringing peace. But who needs peace when you have presence? He tweeted for peace, talked about peace, and tremendously believed in peace – provided it was spelled with a capital “P,” followed by his signature exclamation mark.
If history remembers Gandhi for his fasting and Mandela for his forgiveness, it must remember Trump for his “deal-making diplomacy.” After all, no one has ever tried to solve Middle East tensions with as much enthusiasm and hair volume as Trump did. He brought together Israel and Arab states to sign the Abraham Accords, and if the Nobel Committee had a sense of humor, they’d have handed him a medal shaped like a golf ball right there and then.
But no – the Committee, in its infinite Scandinavian wisdom, looked the other way. They probably decided world peace was safer without a Trump acceptance speech. Imagine the scene: Trump standing in Oslo, gold medal shining, declaring, “Nobody deserves peace more than me. I’ve made the best peace. Other people’s peace is a disaster.”
One can almost hear the translators resigning on the spot.
Trump’s quest for the Nobel Peace Prize wasn’t hidden – it was, in true Trumpian fashion, advertised. He wanted it, he talked about it, and he tweeted about it – a multiple times. Few global leaders have been so openly, earnestly, and shamelessly passionate about self-nomination. When reporters asked him about it, he said, “I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for a lot of things – if they gave it fairly.” That “if” was the cornerstone of the Trump worldview – every competition is rigged unless he wins it.
In fairness, his claim wasn’t entirely without merit. The man didn’t start any major wars (he just started Twitter wars). Under his watch, North Korea didn’t nuke South Korea – though perhaps that was because Kim Jong-Un couldn’t stop laughing at Trump’s letters, those “beautiful” notes between two grown men who flirted through nuclear threats. “We fell in love,” Trump once confessed. Nobel romance, if not Nobel peace.
Trump’s disappointment runs deeper than ego. The man truly believed he was reshaping global peace. He thought meeting dictators was diplomacy, and scolding NATO was leadership. In his mind, pulling troops out of war zones was peace – even if it left chaos behind. In that sense, he wasn’t wrong: peace can be achieved when everyone is too exhausted to keep fighting.
And yet, no medal.
One can imagine Trump watching the Nobel ceremony on TV, arms folded, muttering, “That should’ve been me.” Melania, unmoved, scrolling through Pinterest. Meanwhile, the Committee probably toasted each other for narrowly avoiding an international incident involving an acceptance speech that began with, “Thank you, Norway – a tremendous country, very snowy, but tremendous.”
If we’re honest, Trump’s non-win reveals a broader truth about the Nobel Peace Prize itself – it has become more about optics than outcomes. Some winners had toiled for decades; others just looked good on magazine covers. Trump, however, represents the modern era of instant peace – peace by declaration. He thought saying, “We have achieved peace,” would make it so. In a way, that’s almost poetic. Or delusional. Often both.
But satire aside, there’s something deeply entertaining about how Trump processed the snub. Most of us, when denied an award, move on. Trump? He redefined the loss. He insisted that everyone knew he deserved it. He said he was “nominated several times,” which in Trump-speak meant “I called someone who knows someone on the Committee.”
?He even compared himself to Obama again, asking reporters, “Obama got it. Nobody knew why he got it. I actually made peace.” A statement that sent fact-checkers into spontaneous combustion.
Still, you’ve got to admire his persistence. For a man who built an empire of ego, the Nobel was not just a prize – it was validation, a global endorsement that the world simply wasn’t ready to give him. Maybe they feared he’d rename it the “Trump Peace Prize,” complete with gold trim and a giant “T” embossed across Alfred Nobel’s face.
Perhaps, in a parallel universe, Trump did win it – and immediately used the acceptance speech to announce a new reality show: The Peace Apprentice. Contestants would compete to solve world conflicts, and the winner would be hired as “Chief Peacemaker, LLC.”
That, at least, would have been entertaining.
In the end, Donald Trump didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize. But in true Trump fashion, he’ll say he did. He’ll probably print a replica, frame it at Mar-a-Lago, and host a gala celebrating “one of the greatest Nobel wins of all time.” And why not? In an age where perception trumps reality, maybe that’s the real peace – the peace of believing your own story.
After all, what’s a medal compared to immortality in meme form? The world may forget the winners, but Donald Trump, Nobel or not, will forever remain the man who tried to win peace – one capital letter, one exclamation mark, and one Twitter rant at a time.
