Norwegian officials are dumbfounded after President Trump suggested banning Norwegians from the U.S., calling Norway a “shithouse country” during a Michigan rally on Sunday.
Trump made the comments while complaining to the audience in Port Huron, Michigan, that the Nobel Prize was won by a “woman nobody had ever heard of.”
“I said ‘What about me? Do they do two of them?’ Think of it, I settled, so I’m not in love with Norway. Frankly, Norway sucks. Norway has become a shithouse country actually,” Trump said to laughter.
“Denmark? Take ‘em. Sweden. Norway, I don’t think so because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize,” Trump continued. “I don’t want anybody from Norway, I don’t want anything to do with Norway.”
Norwegian officials are shaking their heads.
“He knows very well that the Nobel committee is independent,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said to NRK, the country’s public broadcaster, on Monday. “We have reminded him of that, in case anyone is wondering, and that is still the case.”
It’s funny that Trump is so annoyed, considering that he said in January that he actually doesn’t care. He still railed against Norway at the time, claiming, “If anybody thinks that Norway doesn’t control the Nobel Prize, they are just kidding. They have a board, but it’s controlled by Norway, and I don’t care what Norway says.”
Even funnier is the fact that way back in his first term, Trump reportedly complained in an Oval Office meeting about accepting immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti and places in Africa, and instead suggested the U.S. should take in more people from countries like Norway, mentioning that country in particular. He said similar words at a rally last December. To Trump, though, being snubbed for an award is enough to override his racist preferences for immigrants.