Blessed are the peacemakers, right?
Wrong. At least not if your name is Donald Trump. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today in Oslo, and our 47th president was the most deserving recipient. There wasn’t a close second. Still, this is Europe, and these are mostly Trump-hating elitists. Which is why they awarded it to a Venezuelan woman named María Corina Machado.
To be clear, the Nobel Peace Prize, given its deeply dubious list of recipients, isn’t worth a bucket of warm, er, spit. But it’s the principle of the thing. And Donald Trump deserved it. Thus, the committee has further discredited both the award and the institution. If that’s possible.
This morning, in awarding the prize to Machado, committee chairman Jorgen Watne Frydnes prattled on about “the Democratic Forces in Venezuela” and about Machado’s “commitment to peaceful protection of democracy” and how “democracy depends on people who refuse to stay silent.” Whatever, dudes.
Who knew it was the Nobel Democracy Prize?
As our Nate Jackson posted on X this morning, there’s a “hilarious irony that literally on the day Israel signs on to a peace deal Donald Trump engineered, the Nobel Prize committee awards the Peace Prize to someone nobody’s heard of in a country no one cares about, and that hasn’t changed one iota because of her efforts.”
Recall that when the Apologizer-in-Chief, Barack Obama, “earned” his Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he’d barely had time to change the drapes and FedEx that bust of Winston Churchill back to 10 Downing Street. Indeed, he hadn’t done a doggone thing toward the furtherance of peace anywhere in the world — such is the meaninglessness of the prize and the malleability of its qualifications.
Alas, it must be a “living” list of criteria.
In fairness to the rigged committee, nominations were due back in February, and only a submission by New York Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, for Trump’s historic 2020 Abraham Accords, had been put forth by that time. Trump hadn’t yet begun his onslaught of peace — hadn’t yet settled armed conflicts between Iran and Israel, India and Pakistan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Azerbaijan and Armenia, Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, and Egypt and Ethiopia. That’s seven conflicts by my count, with the Israel-Hamas peace deal being the eighth.
Even if Trump can’t notch number nine by bringing an end to the slaughter in Ukraine between now and February, who in the world can hold a candle to that list of lifesaving?
As for the Israel-Hamas deal, it was the primary topic of discussion at yesterday’s publicly broadcast cabinet meeting, where the mood was light — and deservedly so, at least for the moment.
There were kudos all around the table for the hard work being done on behalf of the American people — from rounding up criminal illegals to restoring our military might to making America healthy again.
But the dominant topic was that remarkable Middle East peace plan, brokered by Trump and his team, that includes not only a ceasefire but the immediate return by Hamas of all remaining hostages, both living and dead.
It’s a 20-point plan, though, with plenty of moving parts, and the first step has yet to be completed. But Trump and his administration are getting praise from around the world and across the political spectrum for their efforts to secure peace and return the hostages to Israel.
“There’ll be credit for President Trump,” said Connecticut Democrat Senator Dick Blumenthal, “which he deserves, and for others who participated in this really monumental accomplishment.”
“Obviously,” echoed Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, “we have to see how it progresses, but ending the war, hostage release, humanitarian aid, and then the next chapter.”
And get a load of this from the teeth-gnashers and garment-renders on the editorial board of The Washington Post:
The announcement that Israel and Hamas have agreed to President Donald Trump’s plan to end the two-year war in Gaza could be the biggest diplomatic achievement of his second term. Indeed, if the deal holds, Trump can legitimately bolster his claim to be a peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Next, Trump will head to Israel, to the capital of Jerusalem, there to speak before the Israeli parliament. As our Mark Alexander quipped, “It’s hard to believe that Israel would invite a Nazi to address the Knesset.”
How did Trump do it? First, by establishing his credibility. And that means saying what he means and meaning what he says. That means greasing Soleimani and obliterating Iran’s nuclear sites, but it also means playing hardball with Bibi Netanyahu.
As former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman put it yesterday: “The Biden and the Obama administrations had a series of perpetual red lines that were made to be breached, and in the Middle East, you can’t do that. Nobody took them seriously. In the Middle East … people look at you and they ask, ‘Does this guy mean what he says? Does he have the courage of his convictions?’ And with President Trump … that’s a guy that means what he says, that you should pay attention to. And only President Trump, in probably the history of the presidency and their interactions in the Middle East, has the credibility to do something like this.”
Many of us are fond of pointing out that Vladimir Putin never would have invaded Ukraine on Donald Trump’s watch. And while that’s certainly true, it’s also true that Hamas would never have dared to invade Israel and slaughter both Israelis and Americans on October 7, 2023, had Trump been president. As Elizabeth Pipko pointed out about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Fox News last night: “This happened on their watch. … What did they do? Absolutely nothing. What did they do on October 7 last year? I think Kamala Harris planted a tree and sat for the cover of Vogue magazine. That’s how much she cared about Americans being held hostage. … Donald Trump actually brought peace to the region, and he’ll bring some stability and safety back to both Israelis and Palestinians.”
That’s a great point about the Palestinians, because those who live in Gaza have suffered terribly for the last two years due entirely to the devastation that Hamas has invited upon them.
Think about it: Not only were the Israelis chanting for Trump to win the Peace Prize — the Gazans were, too.
Now that’s a peacemaker.
