Trump Criticizes Nobel Prize Winner, Says His Own Award Is Long Overdue

Donald Trump attacked Nobel Peace Prize winner Navi Pillay during a rally and in an extended Truth Social post on Friday night, saying he had “never heard of” her.

The President has made little secret of his ambition to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. Last year’s winner, Maria Corina Machado, even gave Trump her own award.

But Trump made clear at his rally in Syracuse, New York, that he still wants a Nobel Prize of his own. His remarks came after Pillay, a South African jurist and former UN high commissioner for human rights, appeared to mock him.

“Today they gave out the Nobel Peace Prize to a person – I never heard of the person. Nobody did. It’s a mystery person,” Trump said of Pillay, describing the decision as “disgraceful and embarrassing.”

He characterized Pillay as a “liberal person who works at the United Nations” and claimed that the organization had played no role in the conflicts he said he had helped resolve. “In all of the wars that I’ve settled, I never spoke to the United Nations. They were of no help to me,” he said.

“I never heard of this particular person, but congratulations anyway,” Trump added.

He then argued that the United States — and he personally — deserved multiple Nobel Peace Prizes. “We should have had eight Nobel Prizes for each war,” Trump said.

Trump has repeatedly credited himself with helping end eight separate wars during his presidency. He has also said that two more conflicts, in Iran and Ukraine, could soon be resolved.

“The United States of America, represented by me as your President, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t,” Trump said.

He condemned the Nobel committee as “a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and, really, enemies of civilization.”

Addressing Norway, where the committee is based, Trump added: “We will not forget.”

Trump continued criticizing the Nobel decision after leaving the rally, publishing a lengthy statement on his Truth Social account.

“I know nothing about this woman, and neither does anyone else! In fact, to the best of my knowledge, no one ever heard of her other than the fact that she, very obviously, hates Israel. I don’t know what the woman has done,” he wrote.

Much of Trump’s post repeated his argument that his own record made him deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize.

“This is an indelible stain on Norway, one that will never be forgotten. The Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of Radical Ideologues who are Anti-Democracy, and Enemies of Civilization!” he wrote.

Pillay had taunted Trump earlier in the day after receiving the award for her efforts to advance peace and international law.

The South African jurist and former UN high commissioner for human rights joked that she might “share the prize” with the US President if the audience continued applauding.

‘If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,’ Pillay said in a video posted to X by the Secretary General of Amnesty International, which showed Pillay being applauded after the announcement of the award. 

The news will come as a blow to Trump, who heaped extraordinary pressure on the Norwegian committee to give him the award last year.

Pillay’s win is sure to be seen as a high-profile rebuke to Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of a UN commission she led that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. 

Both leaders also have been highly critical of the institutions where Pillay has worked.

Israel slammed the awarding of the prize to the jurist, saying it legitimized ‘anti-Israel hatred’ and that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels must be ‘applauding from hell.’

‘Now that the Nobel commission has rewarded the biggest lie of the 21st century, Joseph Goebbels is certainly applauding from hell,’ the Israeli foreign ministry posted on X.

Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the UN-backed Human Rights Council. 

The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in the country.

The commission also found that the Israeli president, prime minister and former defense minister ‘have incited the commission of genocide.’

Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the commission since it was established in 2021, has strenuously denied the charges.

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‘The Nobel Prize committee has lost its moral compass,’ said Israel’s prime minister’s office on X. ‘It has awarded its highest honor to a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state. 

‘Navi Pillay’s proudest achievement was to legitimize a corrupt prosecutor who turned to her fabrications against Israel hoping that by joining her bigoted lynch mob, he would beat a rape charge. Karim Khan, who was accused by his own ICC employees of raping and sexually molesting them, used Pillay’s lies to build a fake case against Israel. 

‘Pillay supplied the lies. Khan weaponized them. And now the misguided members of the Nobel Committee are honoring the woman who propagated this demonization of the Jews and this travesty of justice.’

Members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) voted to dismiss Khan as chief prosecutor for alleged sexual misconduct in July. 

He has repeatedly denied all the allegations against him and his lawyer said he would challenge ‘the lawfulness and fairness of the decision through all available legal mechanisms.’

Pillay’s work ‘is a source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world,’ said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in announcing her win in Oslo. 

While her work has been global in scope, criticism often has been fiercely local, notably in places like Israel and in apartheid-era South Africa as she and peers took on some of the world’s most painful and sensitive legal issues and most vulnerable populations.

Pillay, 85, received the news while attending the Nuremberg Forum, a gathering to discuss international law in Nuremberg, Germany, the location of the trials of Nazi war criminals that helped lay the foundations of international law.

‘Firstly, at this venue, your applause means a great deal to me,’ she said to a standing ovation. ‘You know, you don’t want to receive an award, prize or anything unless the public agrees that you deserve this.’

And joking, she added: ‘But being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this information.’

Winning a Nobel Peace Prize has long been something of an unfulfilled dream for Trump.

Pakistan announced it had nominated him for the prize once again this year for playing a ‘historic role in advancing peace in South Asia.’   

Pillay has repeatedly rejected accusations from critics who accused her of anti-Semitism or allegedly turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel.

In an interview with The Associated Press last year, she recalled how she worked closely with some Jewish lawyers in the fight against apartheid in her native South Africa and was invited to Israel as the UN rights chief from 2008 to 2014.

Pillay’s win brings renewed attention to Trump’s ongoing feud with the ICC. 

The Trump administration already has sanctioned 13 of the ICC’s staff members, among them key prosecutors and nine judges including the court’s Japanese President Tomoko Akane.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has launched what he called a ‘sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court.’

In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, Trump called the court an ‘out of control institution’ and an ‘anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction’ over the US as he urged member states to quit the ‘rogue institution immediately.’

There are fears the court as a whole could be sanctioned, a move that could seriously hamper its ability to mete out justice.

The Norwegian committee said it sought to strengthen international law at a time of conflict.

‘At a time when the number of wars and conflicts is rising, and when judges and institutions of international law are under political attack, the Nobel Committee wishes to issue a reminder that the ability to resolve conflicts without force or violence is dependent on the international rule of law,’ the committee wrote in a news release.

Pillay is currently serving as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, the highest court of the UN, in the ongoing genocide case against Myanmar.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the prize in 2025 for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation, winning recognition as a woman ‘who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.’

She had not been seen in public since January of that year, when she led demonstrations against then-president Nicolas Maduro, who had been re-elected, despite widely being considered a dictator.

Machado dedicated the prize to Trump for ‘his decisive support of our cause’ and gave him her Nobel medal shortly after Maduro was ousted in January of this year. 

The gesture was largely symbolic, however, as the Nobel Committee has stated the honor itself cannot be transferred.