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By Memphis Barker
October 9, 2025 — 6.50pm
Donald Trump does not align with the ideals of the Nobel Peace Prize and his divisive leadership style will harm his quest for the award, according to insiders.
They say the US president’s military posturing, cuts to USAID and his worldwide tariffs conflict with the spirit of international harmony that the prize’s founder, Alfred Nobel, sought to promote. The winner will be announced on Friday from a list of 338 nominees.
President Donald Trump reads a note from Marco Rubio hours before announcing the Gaza breakthrough.Credit: AP
Trump has piled intense pressure on the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the five-member body that awards the prize, claiming to have “solved” six wars and arguing that it would be an insult to the United States if he does not receive the medal in a prizegiving ceremony on December 10.
Trump’s latest coup is getting Hamas and Israel to agree to a first phase of a peace deal through which Israeli hostages will be released and Israeli troops pulled back. But it still may not be enough.
He spoke this year about the peace prize in a private phone call with Norwegian finance minister Jens Stoltenberg, and US envoys have raised it in one-to-one meetings with their European counterparts.
Henrik Syse, who previously sat on the prize committee, said Trump’s lobbying was “very strange … because it’s very rare that anybody will do a campaign publicly like that”.
But Nobel committee secretary Kristian Berg Harpviken said it would not affect the outcome. He said: “Our procedures are set up to insulate the actual deliberations … from campaigns, media debate and other possible influences.”
As the committee deliberates in the green velvet- and dark wood-lined interior of the Nobel committee meeting room, surrounded by portraits of previous winners, there are signs Trump’s quest for recognition is unlikely to succeed.
Speaking in general terms, Asle Toje, one of the sitting judges, warned that intense pressure campaigns can backfire. He said: “We talk about it on the committee. Some candidates push for it really hard and we do not like it.”
Responding to the remarks, Berg Harpviken said that “my experience is that campaigns do not have an impact, neither negatively nor positively”.
Smoke rises after an Israeli military strike in Gaza City on Wednesday.Credit: AP
Trump’s claim to a peace prize hinges on the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalised relations between Israel and several Arab nations, as well as his self-professed record of peacekeeping this year.
He argues that he brokered deals between India and Pakistan, Rwanda and Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Thailand and Cambodia. Critics say his role has been exaggerated, and that in the case of Congo and others, the results are starting to be eroded.
Another insider pointed out that the Nobel Peace Prize winner is meant to embody the ideals of founder Alfred Nobel, including “how we see the humanity in each other, how our responsibility stretches across borders, how we see the dignity of the individual”. The insider is a close follower of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and Institute, and has worked with both.
The peace prize has gone to controversial candidates before, including Henry Kissinger in 1973, towards the end of the Vietnam War, Yasser Arafat in 1994 following the Oslo peace accords, and F.W. de Klerk, the last president of apartheid-era South Africa.
President Richard Nixon (right) congratulates his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, on winning the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize.Credit: AP
But, the insider said: “I think it’s harder to make the case for someone like Donald Trump, because if you take things like the slashing of USAID and his tariffs policy, and more generally, how he speaks about other nations and other leaders, it doesn’t really reflect the ideals of the Nobel Peace Prize.”
The president’s serious push – and breakthrough – for a peace deal in Gaza has a better chance of recognition next year if he succeeds in strong-arming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to finally agree to end the fighting. Trump has leveraged Qatar to apply pressure on Hamas by agreeing to “Article 5-like” security guarantees for the Gulf Nation.
The insider added: “Arguably it could happen [Trump winning the Nobel]. If it’s clear that [he] was part of such a lasting peace deal. It would be something of a challenge and headache, at least, you know, an enigma for the committee, to find out how you manoeuvre if that were to happen.”
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Nobel Peace Prize historian Asle Sveen was more disparaging of Trump’s chances. Writing in Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, he said he would only win if the prize committee had “a nervous breakdown”.
The deliberations of the committee – which is selected by Norway’s parliament – are kept sealed for 50 years, meaning that the nature of the discussions over Trump’s candidacy will not be revealed until 2075.
But the goal remains the same each year: to follow the mandate of the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swiss inventor of dynamite, and anoint a winner who has “done the most or the best work to promote fraternity between nations”.
Even if Trump is not chosen to receive the 2025 Nobel Peace Price, he will no doubt have other chances: US congresswoman Claudia Tenney, who nominated him, has promised to keep putting forward his name until he wins.
The Telegraph, London
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