The President of the United States, Donald Trump, has launched a harsh attack against Norway, the country where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, by calling it a "shithole country" after expressing his enormous displeasure at not being honored with this award. On this occasion, the Norwegian committee decided to grant the prize to South African jurist Navanethem Pillay.
During a campaign rally prior to the midterm elections —scheduled for November 3— held in Port Huron, Michigan, Trump linked his rejection of the arrival of Norwegian immigrants (and his preference for citizens from Denmark) exclusively to the resolution of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. "I don't want anyone from Norway. I don't want to have anything to do with Norway (...) Frankly, Norway stinks. It has become a shithole country, really," proclaimed the American leader before the gathered audience.
The origin of his anger, as he himself explained, is based on the fact that he would have "resolved eight wars" and would have "two more on the way," mentioning supposed mediations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as between India and Pakistan, conflicts he claims to have stopped and with which he would have saved "at least 30 million lives."
Trump also took the opportunity during his speech to again criticize that his predecessor, Barack Obama, received the Nobel Peace Prize just a few weeks after arriving at the White House in 2009, claiming that he still does not know "why he got it." In contrast, he highlighted the gesture of Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado, who, he recounted, gave him her own medal after stating that Trump "has ended many wars and deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than anyone else."
The day the prize to Pillay was made public, the former president expanded on his social media the list of his supposed international successes, claiming credit for the capture of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, the release of all Israeli hostages held by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and the halting of Iran's nuclear program.
"Despite all this, the Nobel Prize has been awarded to a liberal person who works at the United Nations and whom no one has ever heard of," Trump reproached while referring to Pillay. In his view, the prestigious prize "has been discredited forever by a handful of radical ideologues who are antidemocratic and enemies of civilization."