Trump criticises Norway’s Nobel Peace Prize rejection
President Donald Trump expressed his frustration toward the Norwegian committee responsible for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize, asserting that the decision not to honour him “is just another sign of how Norway and all these others are ripping off our country.” And “The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Syracuse, New York, Friday night. He called the snub an “indelible stain on the country of Norway and those people that made such a disgraceful and embarrassing decision.” The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Navi Pillay, a South African judge and human rights lawyer.
Pillay serves as an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and last year chaired the UN commission that investigated Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza and concluded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration had committed genocide against Palestinians, a finding that the Israeli government firmly denounced. She previously held the position of appeals judge at the International Criminal Court. “The Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilization,” Trump said. “We will not forget, Norway,” he added. Hours after Pillay received the Nobel Prize, the Trump administration unveiled new sanctions against the ICC, which the White House has consistently accused of unfairly targeting the US and Israel. It was not immediately evident whether the sanctions were designed as a reaction to the Nobel announcement.
The move would impose financial punishment on any entity that does business with the ICC, a decision that US allies including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, and Japan cautioned would have a “significant impact” on the court, its staff, and their families. Trump campaigned vigorously in 2025 to secure the prize, arguably the most esteemed accolade in international diplomacy. The Nobel committee remained resolute, ultimately bestowing the prize upon Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado. She subsequently presented her medal to Trump, leading the Nobel Institute to issue a statement clarifying that the prize could not be revoked, shared, or transferred. Since then, Trump has initiated a conflict against Iran in conjunction with Israel, which has persisted throughout much of the year and triggered a sequence of retaliatory actions across the Middle East.
On Friday, he also lifted certain sanctions on Russia associated with the Ukraine war, despite not yet achieving his anticipated peace deal to resolve that conflict. Pillay was attending the Nuremberg Forum, a gathering to discuss international law in the German town that hosted the trials of Nazi leaders after World War II, when she received the news of her victory. The announcement was received with enthusiastic approval from the audience. “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump,” Pillay joked. Trump described Pillay at the rally as “a liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of.” And “I know a lot of people,” the president said. “I’ve never heard of this particular person. But congratulations anyway.”
