Trump has made no secret of his wish to win the prize US President Donald Trump lashed out at Norway at a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday, saying Norwegian immigrants are not welcome in the United States because the Nobel Committee did not award him the Peace Prize. Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide replied that the committee is independent.
“Frankly, Norway stinks. Norway has become a shithole country, in fact,” Trump said at a campaign event a week before the November 3 midterm elections. The president said he would welcome immigrants from certain countries but not from Norway, “because I didn’t get the Nobel Prize. So I don’t want anybody from Norway.”
“He knows very well that the Nobel Committee is independent. We have reminded him of that, in case anyone had any doubts, and that remains the case,” Barth Eide told Norwegian public radio NRK on Monday.
Trump has made no secret of his wish to win the prize. This year the Nobel Committee awarded it to South African jurist Navi Pillay, a former International Criminal Court judge and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a decision Trump called “shameful and embarrassing”. Last year, when the prize went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, he also expressed anger at not being recognised. In 2018, during his first term, he was heavily criticised for using similar language about Haiti and several African countries.