A writer at The Atlantic on Friday called for an end to the Nobel Peace Prize after President Donald Trump picked up two nominations for the prestigious honor.
In a commentary, staff writer Graeme Wood argued that “the committee should take a long break to consider whether peace is a category coherent enough to be worth recognizing.”
Trump’s name was submitted for the 2021 prize by Norwegian lawmaker Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who cited the president’s role in brokering a peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Trump snagged a second nomination from Swedish lawmaker Magnus Jacobsson for overseeing an economic deal between Kosovo and Serbia.
“If Trump wins the prize, it will be the fourth Nobel awarded for peace between Israel and its neighbors,” Wood wrote. “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.”
Twitter users wagged their digital fingers.
“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 wrote.
“The liberal media are having a mental meltdown over Trump’s 2 Nobel Peace Prize nominations,” conservative NewsBusters analyst Nicholas Fondacaro tweeted.
“Is this a parody account,” Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer asked about the Atlantic column.
“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.
