HuffPost UK: Nobel Peace Prize Chief Hits Back After White House Condemns Decision Not To Give Trump Award

A president’s communications director said they had “placed politics over peace”.

The head of the Nobel Committee has hit back after the White House condemned its decision not to award this year’s peace prize to Donald Trump.

Jorgen Watne Frydnes was forced to respond after the president’s top spin doctor said they had “placed politics over peace”.

Trump has been openly campaigning to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming to have stopped as many as eight wars since returning to the Oval Office in January.

However, Watne Frydnes announced on Friday morning that the committee had awarded this year’s peace prize to Venezuelan democracy campaigner María Corina Machado.

In a post on X, they said Machado “has spent years working for the freedom of the Venezuelan people”.

“The Venezuelan regime’s rigid hold on power and its repression of the population are not unique in the world,” the committee said. “We see the same trends globally: rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarisation.”

Their remarks have been interpreted by some as an indirect criticism of Trump, who has been criticised over his legal pursuit of his political enemies and decision to send the national guard into cities run by Democratic politicians.

Writing on X after the Nobel announcement, White House director of communications Steven Cheung hit out at the committee.

He said: “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.”

On Sky News, Watne Frydnes said: “Our response is we hope as many people around the world should support the important work of Machado.

“This is work that we believe is desrrving and we hope that both political leaders, countries and people would support the mass movement that wants democracy in Venezuela and works for a free and fair transition from a brutal dictatorship to democracy.”

Asked about Trump’s campaign to win the award, he said: “We read the news as everyone else and this year there has been quite a lot of focus on that, but I must also say that in the long history of the Nobel peace prize, we have seen all kinds of campaigns, lobbying, pressure.

“Every year we receive thousands and thousands of letters, emails, people who want to express their opinion about who should receive the prize and also what actually leads to peace, so that’s something we’re quite used to.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nobel-peace-prize-chief-hits-back-after-white-house-condemns-decision-not-to-give-trump-award_uk_68e8f9a3e4b0a0b11bf26315

Inquisitr: Trump Roasted As Immigrant Nobel Prize Winners Are Highlighted

The Wall Street Journal roasted Donald Trump in a scathing editorial.

Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal just handed Donald Trump a brutal reality check, and it did it by turning the spotlight on America’s newest Nobel stars. In a blistering editorial, the Journal’s board used this week’s science laureates to torch Trump’s immigration crackdown, arguing that the same immigrant pipelines he is trying to constrict are exactly what keep the United States competitive and inventive. “Welcoming immigrants to the U.S. is out of fashion on the political right these days,” the board wrote, “that’s short sighted for America’s future prosperity,” and the week’s Nobel roll call was Exhibit A.

Six U.S. residents were among nine Nobel winners in the sciences this year, and half of those U.S. based winners were immigrants. The board did not just toss out statistics, it named names, and the list was a pointed rebuke to restrictionism. French born Michel Devoret and British born John Clarke were highlighted alongside American researcher John Martinis for physics work involving quantum mechanical tunneling, a reminder that cutting edge labs often run on global talent.

Jordanian born Omar Yaghi, who fled his country as a refugee and learned English at a community college in Troy, New York, was hailed for chemistry breakthroughs in metal organic frameworks, the kind of next generation materials science that expands the frontier for energy, climate, and biotech.

The Journal’s message was not coy, immigrants are not an asterisk on the American science story, they are central to it. The editorial pointed to research showing that since 2000, immigrants account for roughly 40 percent of all U.S. based Nobel winners in physics, chemistry, and medicine, with an even higher share in physics and chemistry. “You never know who or how the poorest refugee or migrant might blossom into a world class scientist or entrepreneur,” the board wrote, calling immigration a “force multiplier” for U.S. innovation. For a paper often friendly to Republican tax and trade ideas, the tone was unmistakable, Trump’s immigration agenda is sabotaging the very prosperity case his party claims to champion.

Trump has been not so quietly campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize of his own ahead of Friday’s announcement, pitching his foreign policy as prize worthy while his domestic policy targets the student visas, research visas, and legal pathways that feed American labs. The Journal warned that turning the screws on legal immigration, from hiking H 1B costs for startups to discouraging foreign student enrollment, will push future luminaries to study elsewhere, or to take their degrees and go home. You cannot lock the lab doors and expect the breakthroughs to keep walking in.

This was not a partisan blog calling Trump small minded, it was the house editorial voice of a Murdoch flagship telling the Republican frontrunner that his tough on immigration posture is a slow bleed on American dynamism. The board anticipated the standard defenses, that the White House only targets illegal immigration and that anecdotes are not data, then swatted them away. Anecdotes matter, because science advances one person at a time, one lab at a time, and those people often come from somewhere else before they choose to stay here and build.

Newsweek: Donald Trump Nobel Peace Prize comment raises eyebrows

Acomment suggesting President Donald Trump should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has raised eyebrows.

Social media users have reacted to Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, suggesting that the president has been overlooked for the prestigious award.

Why It Matters

Since 2018, Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, which recognizes an individual or organization that has managed to “advance fellowship between nations,” multiple times but has not won.

Only four U.S. presidents have won the award, which is among the world’s most prominent international honors. President Barack Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, eight months into his presidency—a move Donald Trump Jr. described as “affirmative action.”

In the past few months, Trump and his allies have argued in support of the president’s worthiness as a candidate, citing foreign policy interventions his administration has been involved in.

What To Know

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, Witkoff said: “There’s only one thing I wish for—that the Nobel committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since this Nobel award was ever talked about. Your success is game-changing out in the world today, and I hope everybody wakes up and realizes that.”

Several campaign groups and figures responded negatively to Witkoff’s comments.

The X account Republicans Against Trump wrote, “Nobel Peace Prize for what exactly?”

Call to Activism, a progressive political account, called the applause that followed Witkoff’s comments “North Korea-style” and “terrifying.”

User Alok Bhatt told 91,000 followers, “It is astonishing to see the great American empire crumble before our eyes—brick by brick, piece by piece.”

User Ron Smith, a self-described “proud Democrat,” wrote, “Hard to believe this is not a North Korean cabinet.”

What People Are Saying

Mark Shanahan, who teaches American politics at the University of Surrey in the U.K., told Newsweek“The Trump Cabinet is an exercise in obsequious forelock tugging where each member aims to outdo the rest in fawning flattery at the feet of the president. For all his talk, Donald Trump has done little to end the cruelly attritional war in Ukraine following Putin’s invasion, while he continues to support Netanyahu’s total war in Gaza.

“Nobel seeks to support fraternity between nations. With his America First policies, 47 is the antithesis of this.”

President Donald Trump complained about the prize on Truth Social in June: “No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a July news briefing: “It is well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Representative Claudia Tenney, a Republican from New York, wrote on X in June: “I’ve officially nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize twice! He has done more for world peace than any modern leader.”

What Happens Next

The deadline to nominate candidates for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize passed on January 31. Nobel Prize laureates are scheduled to be announced on October 10, with an award ceremony following on December 10 in Oslo, Norway.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-nobel-peace-prize-steve-witkoff-2119969