For months he wanted it badly. Now that he is running a war, he has never heard of it.
In a brief phone interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump was asked whether Operation Epic Fury might improve his chances with the Nobel Committee. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not interested in it.”
Not interested. From the man who spent all of 2025 telling anyone who would listen that he deserved it.
When asked if the prize had come up in conversations with foreign leaders, he was even more dismissive. “No, I don’t talk about the Nobel Prize.” This is the same man who shared articles supporting his nomination on Truth Social and fumed publicly when the award went to someone else.
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That someone else was Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. Trump was so convinced he should have won that he texted Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre to say: “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”
Norway reminded him, politely, that the prize is chosen by an independent committee and not by politicians. Trump did not take that well either.
In January, Machado handed Trump her medal at the White House. He accepted it. The Nobel Foundation clarified that prizes cannot be transferred. The White House pushed back, but Trump kept the medal anyway.
Around the same time, he set up something called the Board of Peace, a body he created to rival the United Nations, giving himself sweeping powers to intervene in global hotspots. At the inaugural meeting, he joked about a note announcing Norway’s involvement in a related Gaza aid event. He briefly thought it was finally about his Nobel Peace Prize.
“Oh, I thought when I saw this note, ‘I’m excited to announce that Norway,’ I thought they were going to say that they’re giving me the Nobel Prize… Finally, finally, they got it right,” Trump quipped. “But I don’t care… I care about saving lives.”
The nominations still came in. Republican lawmakers Darrell Issa, Anna Paulina Luna, and Buddy Carter all put his name forward for the 2026 prize. Netanyahu nominated him too. Several submissions arrived after the February deadline, which limited their impact but not their enthusiasm. Betting markets in mid-March still gave Trump better odds than the Pope.
The actual 2026 contenders include Gaza-based doctors, Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, the widow of Alexei Navalny, and Greta Thunberg. The Nation magazine nominated the people of Minneapolis for their resistance to Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
