Trump’s Nobel Prize quest is now the butt of the joke — and appropriately so

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Earlier this year, President Donald Trump used his status as the world’s most powerful man to effectively coerce the Nobel Peace Prize winner to give him the medal she won .

On Friday, Trump’s quixotic and often bizarre quest for his own Nobel was the butt of a joke for the latest winner, South African human rights pioneer Navi Pillay .

“If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump ,” Pillay quipped to an applauding crowd.

Trump responded later Friday by re-posting a social media post from an ally who attacked Pillay and the Nobel Committee.

The indignity for Trump — and now his second straight Nobel loss since returning to office — caps what is now clearly a lost cause.

His campaign for the Nobel epitomizes the problems of his second term: He seeks personal glory, but he’s all too eager to try and take shortcuts to get there. And strewn along the path are haphazard and often counterproductive gambits.

He brought up the award repeatedly, effectively launching his a lobbying campaign on behalf of himself.

His main claim for why he deserved the award — that he settled more than half a dozen wars — is simply false, as CNN has noted .

Trump drove home how bizarre that claim was when he repeatedly misstated the names of the countries whose wars he supposedly settled.

Trump didn’t even convince much of his own base; a Washington Post poll last year found just 22% of Americans and 49% of Republicans said he deserved the prize.

Talk of a legitimate Trump claim to a Nobel briefly perked up when a phase-one ceasefire deal was reached in Gaza.

But even by that point, the Trump administration was also doing something that seemed quite problematic: It was killing people — alleged drug-traffickers, it has said — without due process on the open seas. Many experts have regarded these as extrajudicial killings that could amount to war crimes.

Also at that time, Trump had dispatched the US military to several places across the country — in some cases illegally, it turned out.

When Trump didn’t win the Nobel last year, FIFA created its own peace prize and bestowed it on him in a transparent effort to curry favor with the president. (The ceremony was a sight to behold.)

But the whole charade really fell apart early this year.

That’s when Trump ramped up his talk about taking over Greenland. He even left open the possibility of taking it by force — effectively threatening an invasion of a NATO ally (although he later backed off that effort).

He actually did invade Venezuela to arrest Nicolás Maduro. The White House might argue this was a humanitarian mission to free the Venezuelan people of an evil, criminal dictator. But Trump left the rest of the regime in power and has since pitched the invasion as an effective seizure of Venezuelan resources (read: oil). He even summarized the operation thusly last month at the United Nations General Assembly: “ To the victor belong the spoils .”

That is not a phrase associated with the average Nobel Peace Prize winner.

A couple weeks after the invasion, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado gave him her medal , apparently hoping it would convince Trump to more strongly support her cause. It has not worked.

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And then Trump in February launched a war against Iran, based on inconsistent and highly suspect claims , that has much of the world crying foul. The war, which has now stretched more than seven months, almost certainly eliminated any hope Trump had of winning a Nobel.

That’s really the story here: Trump looking for his Nobel in all the wrong places — and constantly shooting himself in the foot in the process.

If the president wanted a Nobel prize, it might have behooved him to try and hue a more closely to international law and not kill people who aren’t part of an armed conflict on the high seas. He might also not want to spend time cracking down on the opposition within the US while threatening and launching foreign invasions.

And after failing to end a Russia-Ukraine war that he assured he could end on Day One of his presidency, Trump instead repeatedly exaggerated his role in ending wars. (And in some cases, they weren’t even actual wars.)

Then, when he didn’t win the Nobel last year, he got other people to give him consolation prizes – even though, in both instances, the scene only seemed to drive home Trump’s desperation.

Of course, he doesn’t seem all that worried about looking desperate. Just look at his long-running quest to put his name on things like the Kennedy Center .

He seems focused on crafting the appearance of glory without the hard work and discipline. He’ll throw his weight around in hopes of winning laurels, even if the vast majority of other people don’t view them as legitimate or deserved.

As recently as this week, Trump said it would be “ a great discredit to ” the Nobel Committee if he didn’t get the award.

His attitude was summed up nicely in a New York Magazine interview last month. Reporter Ben Terris asked the president about Democratic Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff’s allegation that he is pursuing his own glorification because nobody else will build monuments to him when he’s gone.

“ That’s true ,” Trump said. “Nobody will do it once I’m gone. When I leave here, nobody will.”

安娜·莫尼梅克/盖蒂图片社

今年早些时候，唐纳德·特朗普总统利用他作为世界上最有权势的人的地位，有效地胁迫诺贝尔和平奖得主将她获得的奖章交给了他。

周五，特朗普不切实际且常常怪异地追求自己诺贝尔奖的行为，成了最新获奖者、南非人权先驱纳维·皮莱的笑柄。

“如果你们再多鼓掌一点，我或许就能和特朗普分享这个奖项了，”皮莱向鼓掌的人群打趣道。

周五晚些时候，特朗普转发了一位盟友在社交媒体上发表的帖子，该帖子抨击了皮莱和诺贝尔委员会。

特朗普所遭受的耻辱——以及他重返总统职位以来连续第二次诺贝尔奖竞选失利——标志着他彻底失败的局面达到了顶峰。

他争取诺贝尔奖的举动，恰恰体现了他第二个任期内的问题：他追求个人荣耀，却又急于走捷径。而通往成功的道路上，遍布着各种随意且往往适得其反的策略。

他反复提及该奖项，实际上是为自己发起了一场游说活动。

正如 CNN 指出的那样，他为自己应该获得该奖项提出的主要理由——他平息了六场以上的战争——完全是错误的。

特朗普反复错误地陈述他声称已经平息战争的国家的名称，这更加凸显了这一说法的荒谬之处。

特朗普甚至没能说服他自己的支持者；《华盛顿邮报》去年的一项民意调查发现，只有 22% 的美国人和 49% 的共和党人认为他应该获得该奖项。

加沙达成第一阶段停火协议后，关于特朗普是否有资格获得诺贝尔奖的讨论一度升温。

但即便到了那时，特朗普政府还在做一件似乎相当成问题的事情：它在公海上未经正当程序就杀害人员——据称这些人是毒品走私犯。许多专家认为这些是法外处决，可能构成战争罪。

当时，特朗普还向美国各地派遣了美军——事后证明，其中一些派遣是非法的。

去年特朗普未能获得诺贝尔和平奖时，国际足联设立了自己的和平奖，并将其授予他，这显然是为了讨好这位总统。（颁奖典礼场面令人叹为观止。）

但这场闹剧在今年年初就彻底败露了。

正是在那时，特朗普加大了关于占领格陵兰岛的言论力度。他甚至不排除武力占领的可能性——实际上是威胁要入侵北约盟国（尽管他后来放弃了这一想法）。

他确实入侵了委内瑞拉，逮捕了尼古拉斯·马杜罗。白宫可能会辩称这是一次人道主义行动，旨在将委内瑞拉人民从邪恶的独裁者手中解救出来。但特朗普并没有动用马杜罗政权的其他成员，并且此后一直将这次入侵包装成对委内瑞拉资源（实为石油）的有效掠夺。他甚至在上个月的联合国大会上这样总结了这次行动：“胜利者享有战利品。”

这并非一般诺贝尔和平奖得主会说的话。

入侵发生几周后，委内瑞拉反对派领导人玛丽亚·科琳娜·马查多将她的勋章赠予特朗普，显然是希望以此说服特朗普更加坚定地支持她的事业。然而，这一举动并未奏效。

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然后，特朗普在二月份发动了对伊朗的战争，其依据是前后矛盾且高度可疑的说法，这引起了世界各国的强烈抗议。这场战争至今已持续七个多月，几乎彻底断送了特朗普获得诺贝尔奖的希望。

这就是事情的真相：特朗普在错误的地方寻找诺贝尔奖——结果却不断地搬起石头砸自己的脚。

如果总统想要获得诺贝尔奖，他或许应该尽量遵守国际法，不要在公海上杀害那些与武装冲突无关的人。他或许也不想一边威胁和发动对外入侵，一边耗费时间镇压美国国内的反对派。

在未能结束他曾信誓旦旦保证能在就职第一天就结束的俄乌战争之后，特朗普反而一再夸大自己在结束战争中所起的作用。（而且在某些情况下，这些根本就不是真正的战争。）

然后，当他去年没有获得诺贝尔奖时，他让其他人给他颁发安慰奖——尽管在这两种情况下，这一幕似乎只会更加凸显特朗普的绝望。

当然，他似乎并不太担心显得自己很急切。看看他多年来一直努力想把自己的名字印在肯尼迪中心之类的建筑上就知道了。

他似乎一心只想营造一种不劳而获的荣耀假象。他会仗着自己的权势，妄图赢得赞誉，即便绝大多数人并不认为这些赞誉是名副其实或当之无愧的。

就在本周，特朗普还表示，如果他没能获得诺贝尔奖，那将是诺贝尔委员会的“巨大耻辱”。

他的态度在上个月《纽约杂志》的一次采访中得到了很好的概括。记者本·特里斯就民主党佐治亚州参议员乔恩·奥索夫的指责向总统提问，奥索夫指责他追求自我颂扬，因为他去世后没有人会为他建造纪念碑。

“没错，”特朗普说。“我走了以后就没人会做了。我离开这里之后，就没人会做了。”