The White House trashed the Nobel Peace Prize committee on Friday after it snubbed President Trump for the coveted award.
As Trump works to finalize a major diplomatic victory with the Gaza ceasefire deal, communications director Steven Cheung accused the prize panel of proving “they place politics over peace” by failing to honor the president.
“He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” Cheung tweeted.
The peace prize instead went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for what the committee called “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said the five-member panel seeks to shut out public lobbying efforts, which many perceived as a dig at the president, though he was not mentioned by name.
“This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel,” he said, referring to the Norwegian tycoon who founded the prizes.
Trump has long coveted the Nobel Peace Prize and has made no secret that he believes he deserves the accolade.
Since returning to the White House, he has claimed credit for solving several conflicts around the world, although some of the feuds aren’t armed conflicts and some of the nations involved discount his role in cooling tensions with rivals.
Trump regularly complains that he is being passed over because the Nobel committee is controlled by liberal “woke” interests.
“They’ll have to do what they do. Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I saved a lot of lives,” Trump said Thursday.
Trump has received myriad nominations for the prize, but most of the boosts came after the Feb. 1 deadline for the 2025 award.
He could still be honored in 2026 or some future year for his role in forging the Gaza deal, which calls for the release of Israeli hostages by Hamas in exchange for Israel ending its war on the Palestinian enclave.
The White House did not issue any statement about Machado’s honor.
Machado is broadly aligned with the U.S. stance of strong opposition to Venezuela’s authoritarian ruler President Nicolás Maduro. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has previously praised her as “the personification of resilience, tenacity, and patriotism.”
