US President Donald Trump. Photo: AFP
United States President Donald Trump has said Norwegian immigrants are not welcome in the US because he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Telegraph reports.
The president made the declaration while addressing his supporters at a rally in Michigan on Monday.
Trump, in the attack on the country, said, “Frankly, Norway sucks. Norway has become a shithouse country, actually.
I will welcome immigrants from Denmark but not from Norway because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize, so I don’t want anybody from Norway.”
Trump has lobbied for the accolade for years and previously pressured the Nobel committee, a five-person team appointed by Norway’s parliament, to recognise his peacemaking efforts.
There was no indication the US administration had adopted a new policy on immigrants from either Scandinavian country.
Trump also repeated his claim that he had ended eight wars, and said he told his wife, Melania, that “it’ll be a great honour to get the Nobel Peace Prize” before the announcement was made.
Earlier this month, the Nobel committee awarded the peace prize to Navi Pillay, a South African former UN human rights chief, Ms Pillay
She was recognised for being “instrumental in ensuring war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted”, according to Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the Nobel committee chairman.
Trump, however, called Pillay “a woman that nobody ever heard of” and said he asked: “What about me? Do they do two of them?”
The US president previously said the failure to give him the peace prize had been a “disgraceful and embarrassing” decision and an “indelible stain” on Norway.
Reacting, the Norwegian foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, told the national broadcaster NRK on Monday that Trump was aware of the body’s fairness
“He knows very well that the Nobel committee is independent. We have reminded them of that, if anyone is wondering, and that is still the case,” Eide said.
Also, last year, Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, explained to Trump that it was an independent committee that awarded the prize, not the Norwegian government.
After he did not win this year, Mr Trump replied, “The Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilisation.”
Ms Pillay, the first non-white female judge of the High Court of South Africa, poked fun at Mr Trump’s desire to win the prize. After learning of her victory, she walked into a room of applause at the Nuremberg court and said: “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump.”
Last year, Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, was awarded the prize and also received a barrage of criticism from Mr Trump.
She later gave him her medal during a meeting at the White House. She said it was in recognition of his commitment to her country’s freedom.
The Nobel committee later clarified that once a Nobel Prize had been announced, it could not be revoked, shared or transferred.