Blessed are the cheesemakers?

And the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2025 is (drum roll)... not Donald Trump.

Like Monty Python's famously misheard beatitude, something has clearly been lost in translation when Trump imagines he has been snubbed by the Nobel committee. While nursing his wounded pride, he wages war on his own people. His aggressive immigration enforcement roadshow (currently visting Chicago) coincides with news that New York Attorney General, Letitia James, is being criminally indicted by a grand jury. Having led a civil fraud investigation against Trump in 2023 she now finds herself subject to bank fraud charges (the phrase 'trumped-up' seems appropriate in this context). 

The message is clear: Trump is embarking on a personal vendetta, a campaign of reprisals against anyone he believes had the temerity to seek to expose his own wrongdoing. This is hardly behaviour becoming of a would-be international peacemaker, and the fact that he wants recognition so desperately is a good reason for making him wait for it. Which is not to say that he doesn't ultimately deserve it: he has achieved more than Joe Biden, who could arguably have brokered a similar deal a year ago, saving countless lives, but wasn't sufficiently forceful in pushing it through.

As for that other notable US presidential Nobel peace laureate, Barack Obama, he seems to have been awarded it for achieving the admittedly not insignificant breakthrough of becoming the first Black American to win the presidency. Indeed, the ex-secretary of the Nobel committee, Geir Lundestad, subsequently expressed regret for the 2009 award after many argued that Obama had not made any impact which merited it. Trump actually has done so but eventually awarding him the honour, which now seems inevitable, comes with clear reputational risks.

Not that the Nobel Peace Prize itself is without controversy. In the opinion of American humourist, Tom Lehrer, when Henry Kissinger was awarded it in 1973 for belatedly negotiating the end of the Vietnam War "political satire became obsolete". Nor is the prize without its own foundational irony, Alfred Nobel having made his fortune from inventing and manufacturing dynamite. But there is further irony in this year's award going to Venezuelan activist, María Corina Machado. Trump had championed her as a supporter of democracy in Venezuela against president Nicolás Maduro, whom he loathes, and she has just returned the compliment by thanking Trump for his "decisive support of our cause.” That should assuage the pain somewhat.

Ending the Ukraine conflict (in Ukraine's favour) would assuredly see Trump's award in the bag.

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