Donald Trump Thinks the Nobel Prize System Is Rigged Because Obama Has One & He Doesn’t

Once again, Donald Trump is telling the whole world how jealous he is of President Obama.

At the U.N. General Assembly Monday, a Pakistani journalist told Trump that he would be deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize if he committed to mediate India and Pakistan’s attempts to work out a decades-old contention over the territory of Kashmir. Trump responded by saying there are plenty of things he could win a Nobel Prize for, but the system is rigged against him.

“I think I’m gonna get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things—if they gave it out fairly, which they don’t,” he said.

His proof? Barack Obama was given one in 2009. And if Obama has something Trump doesn’t, clearly it must be deliberate discrimination.

“They gave one to Obama immediately after his ascent to the presidency, and he had no idea why he got it,” he continued. “You know what, that was the only thing I agreed with him on.”

In reality, Obama was given the award in his first year as President thanks to his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Here’s what the committee wrote at the time:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” they wrote. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

So, basically, he got the award for doing the exact opposite of everything Trump works to represent. Sounds about right.

As for Obama, is it true that he didn’t know why he got the award? At the time, he told reporters that he didn’t see the award “as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.”

In his acceptance speech, he said that “compared to some of the giants of history who’ve received this prize – Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela–my accomplishments are slight.”

“I cannot argue with those who find these men and women–some known, some obscure to all but those they help–to be far more deserving of this honor than I,” he said.

Is that what Trump’s talking about? It’s not surprising that he isn’t able to comprehend humility or the desire to share recognititon with others. Those aren’t traits or values he’s very familiar with.

(image: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!

—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com

Author

Close

Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

twitter