Gutfeld on Trump's nomination for Nobel Peace Prize
President Trump recognized for role in brokering UAE-Israel deal.
The Atlantic magazine raised eyebrows on Friday when it published a piece calling for the abolition of the Nobel Peace Prize after President Trump was nominated for the prestigious honor.
The president's name was submitted for the 2021 prize by Norwegian lawmaker Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who cited Trump's role in brokering a peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Trump has since earned a second nomination from Swedish lawmaker Magnus Jacobsson for overseeing an economic deal between Kosovo and Serbia.
The nominations, however, apparently didn't sit well with the liberal magazine, which declared Friday that "peace had its chance, and blew it."
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"If Trump wins the prize, it will be the fourth Nobel awarded for peace between Israel and its neighbors," wrote Atlantic staff writer Graeme Wood. "That will make Arab-Israeli peace mediators more successful at charming the Nobel Committee than the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has won three times in the prize’s 120-year history, but still less successful than my favorite, which is no one at all.
"Giving the peace prize to no one at all is a tradition the Nobel Committee should revive, perhaps on a permanent basis," Wood added. "The record of achievement of the peace laureates is so spotty, and the rationales for their awards so eclectic, that the committee should take a long break to consider whether peace is a category coherent enough to be worth recognizing. Peace had its chance, and blew it. The Trump nomination ... helps show why."
Wood described Tybring-Gjedde's nomination of Trump "preposterous," saying the president's "main diplomatic maneuver is to adopt a lickspittle posture toward authoritarians, promising them decades in power in return for a smile and a condo development. Peace does not mean a web of personal agreements between rich psychopaths."
"By now the contradictions of the peace prize should be apparent," he added. "Is it given for peace, or for rumors of peace? Do you deserve a prize for maintaining despots, as long as the despots are part of a stable network? Is it given for accidentally wrecking a great military — or only if the destruction is intentional? What if you do all the right things, but you are a boor, or an alleged rapist?"
Wood argued that the peace prize is more "subjective" than the other Nobel honors, stating that 1973 winner Henry Kissinger ended and started "many conflicts" and noting that 2009 honoree Barack Obama refused to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and expanded America’s drone program, adding that the 44th president "won for his promotion of, notably not his success in achieving, 'cooperation between peoples.'"
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"All of this points to one of two conclusions," Wood stated. "The Nobel Committee can either give the prize to do-gooder organizations such as the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders ... or it can keep the prize locked away for a while, and reevaluate its reasoning for a modern era.
"I suspect that that reevaluation will end, if the committee is honest, with the admission that peace can be recognized only by its fruits, which take decades to mature, and not by its seeds. To keep giving awards for the seeds is to court embarrassment, and to make yourself hostage to wacky attention-seeking nominations like Trump’s. Better to shut it down, before the trolls do first."
The article was greeted with incredulity and criticism on social media.
"I don't expect the media to like Trump and don't care about the Nobel, but the hostility here is discrediting," RealClearInvestigations senior writer Mark Hemingway reacted.
"The liberal media are having a mental meltdown over Trump’s 2 Nobel Peace Prize nominations," NewsBusters analyst Nicholas Fondacaro tweeted.
"Is this a parody account," Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer asked.
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"This is silly. Trump does something worthy of it, so the entire system must be burned down?" tweeted Erielle Davidson, a senior policy analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
"I thought people were just trolling the Atlantic when they were saying they’re calling for the end of the Nobel Peace Prize in response to Trump being nominated for 2, but alas, nope: it is real," Daily Wire contributor Harry Khachatrian said.
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The Atlantic recently generated headlines with its explosive reporting that alleged President Trump disparaged fallen World War I soldiers buried at the Aisne-Marne American cemetery near Paris as "suckers" and described the cemetery as being "filled with losers" on a trip to France in 2018.
President Trump, as well as current and former members of his administration, have strongly denied The Atlantic's reporting.