US President Donald Trump told Norway’s prime minister he no longer needed to think “purely of peace” after failing to win the Nobel Peace Prize, in a message published on Monday.
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace,” Trump said in a message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
The authenticity of the message was confirmed to the AFP news agency by a source close to the matter and by Støre to Norwegian newspaper VG.
It is unclear why Trump decided to send a message to Støre as the peace prize is decided by the Norwegian Nobel Committee and not the government.
In a written comment, Støre underlined that the Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded by the Norwegian government.
“I have clearly explained, including to president Trump what is well known, the prize is awarded by an independent Nobel Committee,” Store said.
Trump has long coveted the annual peace prize and last week Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado gifted her Nobel Peace Prize medal to him at the White House.
Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her leadership of Venezuela’s opposition movement amid a crackdown by President Nicolás Maduro, most notably in the much-maligned 2023 presidential election.
Machado’s gesture to Trump followed a series of developments in Venezuela after a blitz US military raid captured Maduro and his wife and brought them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges two weeks ago.
During the visit, Machado gave Trump her Nobel medal “as a recognition for his unique commitment to our freedom,” she told reporters outside the US Capitol.
Trump confirmed on social media that Machado had left the medal for him to keep and said it was an honour to meet her.
“She is a wonderful woman who has been through so much. María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done,” Trump said in his post. “Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María.”
Ahead of Machado’s visit to Washington, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, organisers of the Nobel Prize, said in a statement that a Peace Prize cannot be withdrawn, transferred or shared once it has been announced.
The Nobel Foundation’s statutes and Alfred Nobel’s will — which dictate the merits awardees should have — state that the title of the winner belongs personally to the individual and cannot be legally shared or reassigned to another person.
The medal or the associated diploma can be physically given, sold or auctioned, but this does not confer the award’s title on anyone else.
Ending eight wars?
Trump has often boasted about ending eight wars, styling himself as “the president of peace” and therefore deserving of the Nobel honour but those claims have been exaggerated.
The latest conflict he claims to have ended was two years of fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The other seven are Israel and Iran, Pakistan and India, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia and Serbia and Kosovo.
But some of those conflicts lasted just days and one, Egypt-Ethiopia, had no fighting to end but rather involved long-standing issues of water sharing from the Nile River.
Ethiopia formally inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) last year. It sees the dam as a boon to its economy but Egypt opposed its construction, arguing that it would reduce the country’s share of Nile River waters.
Trump recently told Fox News that one of the ongoing conflicts that has continued despite his claiming to have stopped it, a simmering border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, should actually count more than once.
“I did put out eight wars, eight and a quarter, because, you know, Thailand and Cambodia started going at it again,” he told Sean Hannity last week.
Additional sources • AP, AFP