Josh Fiallo
Sat, October 10, 2026
DAILY BEAST
The Daily Beast/Reuters
Donald Trump has melted down in a midnight rant about being passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize yet again.
The president shared a 590-word screed on Truth Social, whining that he should have eight peace prizes for each war he has supposedly ended in his second term—a tally even many of his top sycophants no longer claim is true.
Bizarrely, one of the conflicts he boasts about ending, between Israel and Iran, was actually reignited in February by him. Yet, Trump still claims that the war, which he initially promised would be over in a matter of weeks, is actually being ended by him with "breakneck speed."
The Daily Beast/Reuters
Donald Trump has melted down in a midnight rant about being passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize yet again.
The president shared a 590-word screed on Truth Social, whining that he should have eight peace prizes for each war he has supposedly ended in his second term—a tally even many of his top sycophants no longer claim is true.
Bizarrely, one of the conflicts he boasts about ending, between Israel and Iran, was actually reignited in February by him. Yet, Trump still claims that the war, which he initially promised would be over in a matter of weeks, is actually being ended by him with "breakneck speed."
In an abnormally long post, even by his standards, the president raged that he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while being actively at war with Iran. / Truth Social
"I settled 8 Wars, with letters being sent from every President and Prime Minister from the countries that I helped to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, and I'm about to settle, or win, two more, Iran and, Russia/Ukraine," he wrote at 11:39 p.m. Friday, ignoring that he promised on the campaign trail he would broker peace between Ukraine and Russia on day one of MAGA 2.0.
He continued, "They're both happening at breakneck speed but, forget them, it's the 8 that I've already settled, any one of which, in particular, Pakistan and India, would be far more than necessary to win the Nobel Prize. In actuality, I should have won 8 Nobel Peace Prizes, not just 1."
Trump, 80, went on to claim he deserves recognition for preventing wars worldwide, including in Korea.
President Donald Trump, who met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term, says he is the reason Korea is not at war. / KEVIN LAMARQUE / REUTERS
"I am also preventing, on a constant basis, a War between South Korea and North Korea, and Japan and North Korea," he boasted. "Add China and Taiwan, and numerous other hot spots, which have not been involved in Wars, only because of President Donald J. Trump."
Trump finally got around to addressing the actual Nobel Peace Prize winner, South African Judge Navi Pillay, 85, who served on the International Criminal Court's Appeals Chamber from 2003 to 2008. The prize committee said in its citation that it sought to "issue a reminder" at a time when "judges and institutions of international law are under political attack."
The president wrote that Pillay is a "liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of."
"I settled 8 Wars, with letters being sent from every President and Prime Minister from the countries that I helped to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, and I'm about to settle, or win, two more, Iran and, Russia/Ukraine," he wrote at 11:39 p.m. Friday, ignoring that he promised on the campaign trail he would broker peace between Ukraine and Russia on day one of MAGA 2.0.
He continued, "They're both happening at breakneck speed but, forget them, it's the 8 that I've already settled, any one of which, in particular, Pakistan and India, would be far more than necessary to win the Nobel Prize. In actuality, I should have won 8 Nobel Peace Prizes, not just 1."
Trump, 80, went on to claim he deserves recognition for preventing wars worldwide, including in Korea.
President Donald Trump, who met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in his first term, says he is the reason Korea is not at war. / KEVIN LAMARQUE / REUTERS
"I am also preventing, on a constant basis, a War between South Korea and North Korea, and Japan and North Korea," he boasted. "Add China and Taiwan, and numerous other hot spots, which have not been involved in Wars, only because of President Donald J. Trump."
Trump finally got around to addressing the actual Nobel Peace Prize winner, South African Judge Navi Pillay, 85, who served on the International Criminal Court's Appeals Chamber from 2003 to 2008. The prize committee said in its citation that it sought to "issue a reminder" at a time when "judges and institutions of international law are under political attack."
The president wrote that Pillay is a "liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of."
This year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Navi Pillay has previously spoken out against Donald Trump's controversial “peace plan
Trump may have been upset that Pillay's first reaction to learning of her peace prize triumph was to mock Trump over his temper tantrum last year, which led him to pressure Venezuela's María Corina Machado to hand him her Nobel Peace Prize.
"If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump," she joked on Friday.
Mere hours later, Trump imposed sanctions on the ICC, where she built much of her legacy.
"President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. "That is why, today, the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court. We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate."
Trump thinks he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize. His quest for it is now the butt of the joke
Analysis by Aaron Blake, CNN
Fri, October 9, 2026
President Donald Trump looks on during an event in the Oval Office of the White House on October 7. - Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
President Donald Trump is enduring his second straight Nobel loss.
"The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn't," he said at a rally in Syracuse, New York, late Friday night, devoting a remarkable amount of time to discussing the prize that was awarded earlier in the day to South African human rights pioneer Navi Pillay.
The president called it an "indelible stain on the country of Norway" and said he'd never heard of this year's winner. (The prize is not awarded by the Norwegian government.)
But Trump's quixotic quest for his own Nobel — which included effectively coercing last year's winner to give him her medal earlier this year— was the butt of a joke for the latest winner on Friday.
"If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump," Pillay quipped to an applauding crowd.
The indignity for Trump caps what is now clearly a lost cause.
But his campaign for the Nobel epitomizes the problems of his second term: He seeks personal glory, but he's all too eager to try and take shortcuts to get there. And strewn along the path are haphazard and often counterproductive gambits.
To recap:
He brought up the award repeatedly, effectively launching his a lobbying campaign on behalf of himself.
His main claim for why he deserved the award — that he settled more than half a dozen wars — is simply false, as CNN has noted.
Trump drove home how bizarre that claim was when he repeatedly misstated the names of the countries whose wars he supposedly settled.
Trump didn't even convince much of his own base; a Washington Post poll last year found just 22% of Americans and 49% of Republicans said he deserved the prize.
Talk of a legitimate Trump claim to a Nobel briefly perked up when a phase-one ceasefire deal was reached in Gaza.
But even by that point, the Trump administration was also doing something that seemed quite problematic: It was killing people — alleged drug-traffickers, it has said — without due process on the open seas. Many experts have regarded these as extrajudicial killings that could amount to war crimes.
Also at that time, Trump had dispatched the US military to several places across the country — in some cases illegally, it turned out.
When Trump didn't win the Nobel last year, FIFA created its own peace prize and bestowed it on him in a transparent effort to curry favor with the president. (The ceremony was a sight to behold.)
But the whole charade really fell apart early this year.
That's when Trump ramped up his talk about taking over Greenland. He even left open the possibility of taking it by force — effectively threatening an invasion of a NATO ally (although he later backed off that effort).
He actually did invade Venezuela to arrest Nicolás Maduro. The White House might argue this was a humanitarian mission to free the Venezuelan people of an evil, criminal dictator. But Trump left the rest of the regime in power and has since pitched the invasion as an effective seizure of Venezuelan resources (read: oil). He even summarized the operation thusly last month at the United Nations General Assembly: "To the victor belong the spoils."
That is not a phrase associated with the average Nobel Peace Prize winner. And he repeated it Friday night, adding, "We're taking out for ourselves — we deserve it."
A couple weeks after the invasion, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado gave him her medal, apparently hoping it would convince Trump to more strongly support her cause. It has not worked.
And then Trump in February launched a war against Iran, based on inconsistent and highly suspect claims, that has much of the world crying foul. The war, which has now stretched more than seven months, almost certainly eliminated any hope Trump had of winning a Nobel.
That's really the story here: Trump looking for his Nobel in all the wrong places — and constantly shooting himself in the foot in the process.
If the president wanted a Nobel prize, it might have behooved him to try and hue a more closely to international law and not kill people who aren't part of an armed conflict on the high seas. He might also not want to spend time cracking down on the opposition within the US while threatening and launching foreign invasions.
And after failing to end a Russia-Ukraine war that he assured he could end on Day One of his presidency, Trump instead repeatedly exaggerated his role in ending wars. (And in some cases, they weren't even actual wars.)
Then, when he didn't win the Nobel last year, he got other people to give him consolation prizes – even though, in both instances, the scene only seemed to drive home Trump's desperation.
Of course, he doesn't seem all that worried about looking desperate. Just look at his long-running quest to put his name on things like the Kennedy Center.
He seems focused on crafting the appearance of glory without the hard work and discipline. He'll throw his weight around in hopes of winning laurels, even if the vast majority of other people don't view them as legitimate or deserved.
As recently as this week, Trump said it would be "a great discredit to" the Nobel Committee if he didn't get the award.
His attitude was summed up nicely in a New York Magazine interview last month. Reporter Ben Terris asked the president about Democratic Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff's allegation that he is pursuing his own glorification because nobody else will build monuments to him when he's gone.
"That's true," Trump said. "Nobody will do it once I'm gone. When I leave here, nobody will."
This story has been updated with additional developments.
Analysis by Aaron Blake, CNN
Fri, October 9, 2026
President Donald Trump looks on during an event in the Oval Office of the White House on October 7. - Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
President Donald Trump is enduring his second straight Nobel loss.
"The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn't," he said at a rally in Syracuse, New York, late Friday night, devoting a remarkable amount of time to discussing the prize that was awarded earlier in the day to South African human rights pioneer Navi Pillay.
The president called it an "indelible stain on the country of Norway" and said he'd never heard of this year's winner. (The prize is not awarded by the Norwegian government.)
But Trump's quixotic quest for his own Nobel — which included effectively coercing last year's winner to give him her medal earlier this year— was the butt of a joke for the latest winner on Friday.
"If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump," Pillay quipped to an applauding crowd.
The indignity for Trump caps what is now clearly a lost cause.
But his campaign for the Nobel epitomizes the problems of his second term: He seeks personal glory, but he's all too eager to try and take shortcuts to get there. And strewn along the path are haphazard and often counterproductive gambits.
To recap:
He brought up the award repeatedly, effectively launching his a lobbying campaign on behalf of himself.
His main claim for why he deserved the award — that he settled more than half a dozen wars — is simply false, as CNN has noted.
Trump drove home how bizarre that claim was when he repeatedly misstated the names of the countries whose wars he supposedly settled.
Trump didn't even convince much of his own base; a Washington Post poll last year found just 22% of Americans and 49% of Republicans said he deserved the prize.
Talk of a legitimate Trump claim to a Nobel briefly perked up when a phase-one ceasefire deal was reached in Gaza.
But even by that point, the Trump administration was also doing something that seemed quite problematic: It was killing people — alleged drug-traffickers, it has said — without due process on the open seas. Many experts have regarded these as extrajudicial killings that could amount to war crimes.
Also at that time, Trump had dispatched the US military to several places across the country — in some cases illegally, it turned out.
When Trump didn't win the Nobel last year, FIFA created its own peace prize and bestowed it on him in a transparent effort to curry favor with the president. (The ceremony was a sight to behold.)
But the whole charade really fell apart early this year.
That's when Trump ramped up his talk about taking over Greenland. He even left open the possibility of taking it by force — effectively threatening an invasion of a NATO ally (although he later backed off that effort).
He actually did invade Venezuela to arrest Nicolás Maduro. The White House might argue this was a humanitarian mission to free the Venezuelan people of an evil, criminal dictator. But Trump left the rest of the regime in power and has since pitched the invasion as an effective seizure of Venezuelan resources (read: oil). He even summarized the operation thusly last month at the United Nations General Assembly: "To the victor belong the spoils."
That is not a phrase associated with the average Nobel Peace Prize winner. And he repeated it Friday night, adding, "We're taking out for ourselves — we deserve it."
A couple weeks after the invasion, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado gave him her medal, apparently hoping it would convince Trump to more strongly support her cause. It has not worked.
And then Trump in February launched a war against Iran, based on inconsistent and highly suspect claims, that has much of the world crying foul. The war, which has now stretched more than seven months, almost certainly eliminated any hope Trump had of winning a Nobel.
That's really the story here: Trump looking for his Nobel in all the wrong places — and constantly shooting himself in the foot in the process.
If the president wanted a Nobel prize, it might have behooved him to try and hue a more closely to international law and not kill people who aren't part of an armed conflict on the high seas. He might also not want to spend time cracking down on the opposition within the US while threatening and launching foreign invasions.
And after failing to end a Russia-Ukraine war that he assured he could end on Day One of his presidency, Trump instead repeatedly exaggerated his role in ending wars. (And in some cases, they weren't even actual wars.)
Then, when he didn't win the Nobel last year, he got other people to give him consolation prizes – even though, in both instances, the scene only seemed to drive home Trump's desperation.
Of course, he doesn't seem all that worried about looking desperate. Just look at his long-running quest to put his name on things like the Kennedy Center.
He seems focused on crafting the appearance of glory without the hard work and discipline. He'll throw his weight around in hopes of winning laurels, even if the vast majority of other people don't view them as legitimate or deserved.
As recently as this week, Trump said it would be "a great discredit to" the Nobel Committee if he didn't get the award.
His attitude was summed up nicely in a New York Magazine interview last month. Reporter Ben Terris asked the president about Democratic Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff's allegation that he is pursuing his own glorification because nobody else will build monuments to him when he's gone.
"That's true," Trump said. "Nobody will do it once I'm gone. When I leave here, nobody will."
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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