Trump Awards Himself “His” Nobel Peace Prize
In several talks in the last few days, Donald Trump, our erstwhile President, has claimed “His” Nobel Peace Prize, for being the one who brought the Korean War to an end, and denuclearized North Korea. Of course, these possible results were advanced by changes in attitudes of both sides, led by friendly President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, and mercurial Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-un.
The Nobel Peace Prize is in fact awarded not by Sweden, but by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. (This article needed lots of Wikipedia look-ups). Trump may be the first person to award himself a Nobel Prize. He really doesn’t need any foreign committee to choose him, since he is smarter than anyone, anywhere, for all time, who could make such a choice. The fact that he hasn’t even yet chosen the meeting place, or is waiting for a TV spectacular to announce it, doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Trump’s dream of obtaining deal making immortality by denuclearizing North Korea will definitely lead him to settle for a far less secure treaty than if he had stuck to his guns, as he promised. If a deal fails, then he would lose his immortality, his Nobel Peace Prize, his 5th Avenue ticker tape parade past his Trump Tower, his military parade in Washington, his White House gathering of world leaders in congratulations, his UN address, his Congressional address, his Pentagon address, his State Department address, his destruction of the Russia Witch Hunt, and his self-declared unanimous re-election.
Trump hasn’t mentioned that three people can share a Nobel Prize, with the obvious candidates being the leaders of the countries involved, Moon Jae-in, and Kim Jong-un. The real hero of denuclearization might in fact be President for Life of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, who gives material support to North Korea. Maybe the Norwegian Nobel Committee would include Xi, instead of the dictator Kim, who murders his relatives, and imprisons thousands of political enemies, and their families.
So let’s look at Trump from the committee’s point of view. Most Nobel Laureates have been humble people. Even if some were self-promoting, they haven’t been the biggest ego-maniac anywhere, of any time. The Committee hasn’t given the prize to anyone who publicly awarded themselves the Prize before they have even accomplished anything. They haven’t awarded the prize to someone who is a climate science denier, especially having given the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to Vice President Al Gore and the IPCC “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.
Speaking of Diplomacy, this article was triggered by Trump’s address yesterday at the swearing in of Mike Pompeo at the State Department, where Trump took credit for the Korean negotiations and his Nobel Prize. The Nobel Peace committee also has to be afraid of what glories Trump might claim in his acceptance speech, and what immortal lies he might tell. While praising Pompeo as first in his class at West Point, Trump had to negate this by saying that some have claimed that Trump was first in his class at the Wharton school. Interviews show that Trump was in fact a mediocre student. Trump also claimed that he had or would build up State to be the best in decades, where, in fact, he had Tillerson try to reduce it by a third, and had caused and unfilled many vacancies. The State Department showed their excellent diplomacy and non-partisanship by not gefawwing at that one.
The Norwegian Nobel Comittee are unlikely to award the Prize to the leader of the second most greenhouse gas polluting nation, who single handedly took the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement among all the 189 nations of the world. They are unlikely to give the Prize to the man who single-handedly might take the US out of the 2015 Iran denuclearization agreement between Iran and six world powers: US, UK, Russia, France, China, and Germany, which was signed by Nobel Peace Laureate and US President Barack Obama. They would have trouble giving the Prize to the man who has rejected every free-trade agreement ever signed. They might cringe at awarding a man who called his future negotiating partner “little rocket-man”, and who threatened his nation with destruction through “fire and fury” like never seen before. They are unlikely to award the Prize to a leader who has shown extreme prejudice toward Muslims, Mexicans, African-Americans, and African Nations, and who cannot bring himself to denounce Nazis, once the scourge of all Europe. They could not give the award to someone who has backed destroying the European Union, and who has threatened to pull out of NATO.
Trump is so ego-maniacal though, that he can simply declare himself a Nobel Peace Prize winner. The award, around a million dollars, is only about 1/5,000 th of what Trump is worth, anyway. Better yet, Trump can declare his own far superior Trump Peace Prize, and give himself the one and only such prize ever awarded. This reminds me of the wonderful 1807 painting by Jacques-Louis David of The Coronation of Napoleon at Notre-Dame de Paris in 1804, ordered by Emperor Napoleon I. It shows Napoleon crowning himself Emperor, since nobody else was above the Emperor to be able to bestow such an honor upon him. Pope Pius VII simply blessed the coronation.
