Donald Trump didn’t win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize — and he’s not taking it quietly.
The president, never one to let a perceived slight go unpunished, used the moment to slam former President Barack Obama, whose 2009 win remains a sore spot for Trump more than a decade later.
“He got a prize for doing nothing,” Trump said Friday at the White House, when a reporter brought up Obama’s Peace Prize win. “Obama got a prize… He didn’t even know what he got. He got elected and they gave it to Obama for doing absolutely nothing, but destroying our country.”
Trump didn’t stop there. He continued, calling Obama “not a good president,” before pivoting to one of his favorite targets. “The worst president was Sleepy Joe Biden.”
If Trump was hoping for a Peace Prize this year, he was never subtle about it. His years-long obsession with the accolade has played out on stages from campaign rallies to his Truth Social posts. But his disappointment this year was particularly palpable — and it didn’t go unnoticed.
On “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Friday night, the late-night host aired a supercut of Trump’s many public complaints about Obama’s Nobel win. Kimmel then read a recent, now viral, headline that perfectly captured the moment: “Norway braces for Trump’s reaction if he does not win the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“That’s not a headline from The Onion, that’s real,” Kimmel told his audience, laughing. “The government of Norway is scared he might punish them — that he might declare them an enemy for not giving him the Nobel Peace Prize.”
And while Trump fumed, this year’s actual laureate responded to the news of her award with humility — a striking contrast.
“Oh my God. Well, I have no words,” said María Corina Machado during her call with Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute. “Thank you so much, but I hope you understand that this is a movement — an achievement of the whole society. I am just one person. I certainly do not deserve this.”
Machado has become a symbol of nonviolent resistance against the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Her recognition by the Nobel Committee highlights the global stakes of democratic resistance — and perhaps, in Trump’s mind, another reason to keep the spotlight on himself.
Watch Trump’s remarks and Kimmel’s monologue in the videos below:
Here’s Kimmel’s take on Trump’s obsession with the Nobel Peace prize:
