President Donald Trump sharply criticized the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Saturday after it awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to South African jurist Navi Pillay, passing over the U.S. president despite multiple nominations. In a post on Truth Social, Trump listed what he described as his achievements, including settling eight wars, securing the release of Israeli hostages, and preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
«I settled 8 WARS, am close to ending or settling 2 more, got all of the Israeli hostages back, including the final 28, both living and dead, had hundreds of hostages, from countries all over the World, released and sent back home, won a war in Venezuela, and captured the violent dictator who so viciously ran that country, and stopped the number one state sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, from obtaining a Nuclear Weapon — AND MUCH MORE! Yet, with all of that I, or the United States of America, did not get the Noble Peace Prize. WOW!» Trump wrote.
Trump has long expressed a desire for the Nobel Peace Prize. He received his first nomination in 2018 from Norwegian lawmakers for diplomatic efforts involving North Korea and nuclear disarmament. In 2019, he told reporters, «I think I'm going to get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly, which they don't.» While the Norwegian Nobel Committee does not publicly release its list of nominees, Trump has been nominated at least five times, according to the individuals who put his name forward. Those nominators include former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2019 and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2025.
This year, Trump was nominated again by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and others, but the prize went to Pillay, an 85-year-old jurist who was the first non-White woman appointed to South Africa's high court. She later served as a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Court, and as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014.
The Nobel Committee's announcement highlighted Pillay's work as chair of the U.N.'s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Palestinian Territory and Israel. That role has drawn controversy, with skeptics claiming her work on the commission displayed anti-Israel bias. Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices and director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights, told Fox News Digital, «Navi Pillay is indeed a world leader, an individual at the forefront of the international spread of the poisonous forms of antisemitism that beset the 21st century.»
The United Nations, however, praised Pillay's career. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement on Friday that «for decades, she has been a champion of international law and human rights and a steadfast, independent voice of justice amidst some of the most historic international legal cases of our time.»
Trump's public frustration over the award adds to a long history of his interest in the prize, which he has linked to his foreign policy record. The decision by the Norwegian committee to honor Pillay, whose commission work has been a flashpoint in debates over Israel and international law, is likely to keep the Nobel Peace Prize in the center of political discussion in the United States and abroad.