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Trump calls Nobel Peace Prize pick ‘disgraceful’

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South African lawyer and champion of international law Navi Pillay addresses journalists after she was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, on October 9, 2026 at the historic Courtroom 600 of Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice, venue of the 1945-1946 Nuremberg Trials against leaders of defeated Nazi Germany, in Nuremberg, southern Germany, where she was attending the Nuremberg Forum 2026 conference of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South Africa’s Navi Pillay, the judge who headed the Rwanda genocide tribunal and who last year presided over a UN commission which accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. Pillay, currently a judge on the International Court of Justice in a case where Myanmar also stands accused of genocide, has been “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo. (Photo by Frank BOXLER / AFP)

US President Donald Trump slammed the “disgraceful” Nobel Peace Prize choice on Friday as leaving an “indelible stain” on Norway, arguing that the award should have gone to him.

South African judge and human rights champion Navi Pillay won the prestigious prize on Friday in recognition of her work against war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But Trump labelled the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s choice as “a disgraceful and embarrassing decision”, telling a rally of his supporters in Syracuse, New York he had “never heard of” Pillay.

“I never heard of this particular person, but congratulations anyway,” he said.

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“The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t.”

He said the choice of Pillay as laureate left “an indelible stain on the country of Norway”.

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has made no secret of his desire to win the Nobel Peace prize.

But his war against Iran, his territorial expansion ambitions as in Greenland, his hard line on migrants, and his attacks on multilateralism and the media disqualified him, according to experts in Oslo speaking before Pillay was announced as laureate.

The prize comes with a gold medal, a diploma and a prize sum of $1.2 million.

“The Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilisation,” Trump said.

Pillay had joked about sharing her prize with Trump, telling a crowd who applauded her after the announcement of the award: “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump.”

The jibe appeared to be in reference to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who gave her Nobel gold medal to Trump after winning the prize last year.

AFP

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