President Donald Trump once again asserted that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize during his speech at the U.N. General Assembly this week, claiming that “everyone” thinks he should be granted the prestigious honor.
Uh, who’s everyone?
While Trump’s most devoted supporters might nod along, the broader public, most of whom already disapprove of his overall performance, is far less convinced.
According to a recent Ipsos poll for the Washington Post, 76% of Americans believe that Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, while just 22% believe that he does.
Even Republicans are divided, with 49% in support and 49% in opposition. And among independents, only 14% support the idea, while just 3% of Democrats say he deserves it.
A cartoon by Clay Jones.
Predictably, Trump isn’t swayed by the numbers.
“The only poll that matters to President Trump is the thousands of lives he has saved by ending decades-long conflicts around the world,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Axios. “No world leader has done more to advance global stability, and while he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize many times over, he cares more about saving people from being killed.”
During his U.N. speech, Trump took credit for ending “seven unendable wars”—a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.
“What I care about is not winning prizes, it’s saving lives,” he added.
Of course, that statement is more aspirational than factual. Trump has long sought the Nobel Prize so forcefully that one in ten Americans already thinks that he’s won it.
In June, while unveiling an agreement to resolve a decades-long conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Trump mentioned the Nobel six times.
“No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do,” he whined at the time.
Trump has also floated the idea that brokering a peace deal in Ukraine might secure the honor. During his U.N. speech, he warned that Russia would face “a very strong round of powerful tariffs” if Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses to negotiate.
The American public has historically been skeptical of awarding the Nobel to sitting presidents. In its survey, Ipsos found that 54% still believe that former President Barack Obama didn’t deserve the prize when he received it in 2009. And at that time, a Quinnipiac University poll found that just 26% of Americans believed that he deserved the honor.
Trump has dismissed that precedent.
“If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds,” he said last year.
World leaders have weighed in, too. French President Emmanuel Macron suggested Tuesday that the only path for Trump to earn a Nobel would be to end Israel’s war in Gaza.
French President Emmanuel Macron sits beside President Donald Trump during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in August.
“There is one person who can do something about it, and that is the U.S. president,” he said.
But the decision ultimately rests with the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, at least three of whom have publicly criticized Trump. Chair Jorgen Watne Frydnes has highlighted Trump’s attacks on the media during the 2024 election, while another member said that Trump “is well underway in dismantling American democracy.”
This episode is just another example of a familiar pattern of Trump’s: an obsession with accolades, personal branding, and looking like a winner—often at the expense of reality.
Trump presents the Nobel as proof of his global peacemaking efforts, but the facts—and public opinion—tell a very different story. During his U.N. speech, while he boasted about his record on conflict resolution, the gap between his claims and reality was impossible to miss.
The “seven unendable wars,” he claims to have ended are, in fact, still raging—or barely changed at all by his actions.
A Nobel Peace Prize for Trump seems unlikely—but surely he’ll move on, probably with another self-congratulatory parade to soften the blow.
