Hours before the official announcement of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — and smack in the middle of an alleged deal between Israel and Hamas — Norway is bracing itself for a potential President Donald Trump Nobel Peace Prize snub, the Guardian reports.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said they reached their peace prize decision on Thursday, and "observers believe it is highly unlikely that Trump will be awarded the prize, leading to fears in the country over how he will react to being overlooked so publicly," the Guardian says.
Oslo must be “prepared for anything," said Kirsti Bergstø, leader of Norway’s Socialist Left party.
“Donald Trump is taking the US in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything,” Bergstø told the Guardian.
Noting that the Norwegian government has nothing to do with the prizes, Bergstø said, “The Nobel Committee is an independent body and the Norwegian government has no involvement in determining the prizes. But I’m not sure Trump knows that. We have to be prepared for anything from him.”
Trump has relentlessly campaigned for the prize, insisting last year, "If I were named [former President Barack] Obama, I would have had the Nobel prize given to me in 10 seconds."
In July, Trump reportedly called Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s finance minister and the former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secretary general, to ask about the prize. And at the United Nations last month, Trump claimed he's ended seven “unendable wars”, telling world leaders: “Everyone says I should get the Nobel peace prize.”
Norway's Green Party leader Arild Hermstad, disagrees, saying, "It’s good that Trump supported the recent ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Any step toward ending the suffering in Gaza is welcome. But one late contribution does not erase years of enabling violence and division.”
Newspaper columnist and analyst Harald Stanghelle said that Trump retribution could come in many forms — tariffs, demands for higher NATO contributions, or even "declaring Norway an enemy."
Nobel snubbing Trump, Stanghelle says, could present "a challenging situation."
“It’s very very difficult to explain to Donald Trump or to many other countries in the world that it is a totally independent committee because they do not respect this kind of independence," he said.
But he still thinks Trump will be snubbed.
He said that if Trump were to win it, it would be the “biggest surprise in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Nina Græger, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, agrees, saying, “Trump’s retreat from international institutions, and his wish to take over Greenland from The Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally, as well as infringements on basic democratic rights within his own country, do not align well with Nobel’s will.”