Donald Trump didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Again. And while that might not surprise anyone outside his base, it likely stings for one very specific reason: Barack Obama still has one — and he doesn’t.
Instead, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the prize to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, recognizing her years-long fight for democracy against the authoritarian Maduro regime. A choice that highlights real personal risk and courage — not flashy diplomacy or backroom ceasefires.
For Trump, though, the prize has never really been about peace. It’s always been about Obama.
His latest push came on the heels of a ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Hamas war brokered earlier this week, with Trump trying to frame it as a game-changing diplomatic victory. The MAGA echo chamber roared into motion, with Eric Trump even suggesting the prize be renamed after his father, scrapping Alfred Nobel entirely. That fantasy died Thursday morning.
When asked on Wednesday whether he thought he had a shot at finally bagging the prize, Trump hedged.
“I have no idea,” he said. “I mean, look, I did settle — Marco [Rubio] will tell you — we did settle seven wars. We’re close to settling an eighth, and I think we’ll end up settling the Russia situation, which is horrible… I think we’ll settle that, so… I don’t think anybody in history has settled that many, but perhaps they’ll find a reason not to give it to me.”
They found a reason. Several, probably.
Asle Toje, deputy leader of the Nobel committee, had already hinted that Trump’s relentless campaigning for the prize was backfiring.
“These types of influence campaigns have a rather more negative effect than a positive one,” Toje said. “Because we talk about it on the committee. Some candidates push for it really hard, and we do not like it.”
That may be the understatement of the year. Trump’s not just “pushing for it.” He’s been obsessed with it — because Obama has it.
Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, barely a year into his first term. The committee cited his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” At the time, it was controversial. Many thought it was premature. Trump, however, saw it as a personal affront — and never let it go.
Over the years, he’s made his bitterness clear. “Obama got it for not doing anything,” Trump has repeatedly griped at rallies. In March, his former National Security Adviser John Bolton laid it out bluntly: “He saw that Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, and felt if Obama got it for not doing anything, why should he not get it?”
That resentment traces back even further — to 2011, when Obama humiliated Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, mocking him over his “birther” conspiracy theory. Trump sat stone-faced in the audience as Obama reduced him to a punchline. According to many close to Trump, that moment never left him.
It’s not subtle. Trump has posted an AI-generated video showing Obama being sent to prison, wearing an orange jumpsuit in a dark cell — a bizarre revenge fantasy that underscores just how deeply the rivalry runs in his mind.
Former RNC chairman Michael Steele recently summed it up: “It’s clear that Obama has been living in Trump’s head rent-free for the last two decades.”
“Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize? Trump spends years obsessing about winning it himself. Obama passes a historic healthcare law? Trump makes it his top priority to overturn it.”
Trump has even confused Obama with Joe Biden on the campaign trail, once bizarrely claiming he beat Obama in 2016. He’s bragged that he’s “healthier than Obama,” and pointed to crowd sizes and imaginary polls as evidence that he’s more popular.
But no amount of rallies or AI deepfakes or ceasefire deals can change the fact: Obama’s got the Nobel Peace Prize, and Trump doesn’t. Not now, not this year, and possibly never.
For a man who views life as a scoreboard — wins and losses, trophies and headlines — it’s one more glaring reminder that he still hasn’t managed to erase the legacy of the president he’s spent the last decade trying to outdo.
And it’s eating him alive.
