Nobel Chair Defends Decision as He's Grilled About Trump's Campaign for Peace Prize [View all]
Source: MEDIAite
Oct 10th, 2025, 5:53 am
The chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, pushed back against suggestions that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize decision was made to spite President Donald Trump’s public campaign for the award. Frydnes was asked directly just moments after he announced this year’s prize would go to Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado, whether Trump’s repeated insistence that he “deserves” the prize had affected deliberations.
A reporter in the room asked: “During the past months, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and he’d like to have it. He even said it would be an insult to the United States if he doesn’t get it. What [do you], as chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, think of this? And how has this campaign-like activity by the president and his supporters, domestically and internationally, affected the deliberation and thinking in the committee?”
He replied: “In the long history of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think this committee has seen many types of campaign, media attention. We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what, for them, leads to peace. This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.”
The remarks came moments after Machado was awarded the 2025 Peace Prize. Frydnes called her a “brave and committed champion of peace” who “keeps the flame of democracy burning during a growing darkness.”
Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/online/nobel-chair-defends-decision-as-hes-grilled-about-trumps-campaign-for-peace-prize/
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