President Donald Trump took part in a dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Blue Room of the White House in July. During that visit, Netanyahu told Trump he nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. File Photo by Al Drago/UPI | License Photo
As the Norwegian Nobel Committee prepares to announce the Nobel Peace Prize Friday morning, Norwegians are preparing themselves for the ire of President Donald Trump who has campaigned for months to get the coveted award.
The Committee said Thursday that it had decided on the winner of the 2025 award on Monday, which was before Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire, which was designed by the president’s administration.
Trump told reporters in June that the Nobel Committee “should give” him the prize, and that he “should have gotten it four or five times,” CBS News reported.
In early July, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a letter to the Nobel Committee recommending Trump for the prize. Since then, Trump has actively touted his own achievements, including saying that he has ended seven “unendable” wars.
“In a period of just seven months, I have ended seven ‘un-endable’ wars,” he said to the United Nations General Assembly in September. “No president or prime minister — and for that matter, no other country — has ever done anything close to that.”
Several American presidents and vice presidents have won the award, most recently President Barack Obama.
Trump reportedly called Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s finance minister and the former NATO secretary general, in July to ask about the Nobel prize.
Newspaper columnist and analyst Harald Stanghelle said that he believes retribution from Trump could be in tariffs, demands for higher NATO contributions or possibly calling Norway an enemy, The Guardian reported.
“He is so unpredictable. I don’t want to use the word ‘fear’ but there is a feeling that it could be a challenging situation,” Stanghelle said. “It’s very, very difficult to explain to Donald Trump or to many other countries in the world, that it is a totally independent committee because they do not respect this kind of independence.”
He said if Trump wins, it would be the “biggest surprise in the history of the Nobel peace prize.”
Oslo must be prepared for anything, said Kirsti Bergsto, who leads Norway’s Socialist Left party.
“Donald Trump is taking the U.S. in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything,” Bergsto told the Guardian. “The Nobel Committee is an independent body, and the Norwegian government has no involvement in determining the prizes. But I’m not sure Trump knows that.”
Norway’s Green party leader said the Nobel Committee has credibility because of its independence.
“Peace prizes are earned through sustained commitment, not through social media tantrums and not from intimidation,” The Guardian reported he said. “It’s good that Trump supported the recent cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas. Any step toward ending the suffering in Gaza is welcome. But one late contribution does not erase years of enabling violence and division.”
Nina Graeger, director of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, told the Guardian the groups most likely to win the prize this year are Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
“Trump’s retreat from international institutions, and his wish to take over Greenland from the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally, as well as infringements on basic democratic rights within his own country, do not align well with Nobel’s will.”
The prize will be announced at 5 a.m. EDT Friday. It will be awarded Dec. 10 in Oslo.
