President Donald Trump has repeatedly made it clear, ever since returning to office in January, that he would really like to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He has stated many times that he wants the award, he has complained that he hasn’t gotten it, and his foreign policy decisions have sometimes seemed motivated by his desire to win that award. Members of Congress and foreign world leaders have even made a big show out of nominating Trump for the Peace Prize.
However, those efforts are for naught, as the Nobel Peace Prize winner was announced on Friday. It’s not Trump, but rather María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan democracy activist and opposition leader. She won the award, per the Nobel organization, for “promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.”
The White House has responded to the news that Trump’s hopes for a Nobel Peace Prize have not been fulfilled, at least not this year.
President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives.
He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will.
The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace. https://t.co/dwCEWjE0GE
— Steven Cheung (@StevenCheung47) October 10, 2025
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“President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said on X Friday morning. “He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will. The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”
So why didn’t Trump win the prize?
It’s not traditionally been a key tenet of the Nobel process for a candidate to beg to win the award, or to preemptively whine that he’s unlikely to get it.
Per CNN, there’s another reason why Trump didn’t win: “the nomination process ended on January 31, when he had only been in office for 11 days.” Therefore, such actions as the Israel/Hamas peace deal, reached this week, would not have had any bearing on this year’s award, nor would the many other wars that Trump has claimed to have ended since coming back into office.
However, that’s likely little comfort for Trump, especially considering that his longtime enemy Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, his own first year in office.
The Guardian, this week, published a story stating that “Norway braces for Trump’s reaction if he does not win Nobel Peace Prize.” That is likely not a headline that has ever before referred to a non-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
