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It’s not hard to placate Donald Trump; the man-child has a bottomless need to be praised and likes shiny gold toys. Given that Dementia Dictator has been whining for almost a year about wanting the Nobel Peace Prize — for those eleventy-two wars he’s ended yet not named — smooth operators have clocked how to get at his heart (or the cavity where one would be). FIFA freakin’ made up their own Peace Prize they gave him in December. More recently, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado ingeniously played a card as only she can. You see, Trump didn’t nab the real Nobel Peace Prize; it was awarded to Machado in October for the work she’s done to promote democracy in her country. Of course circumstances have changed since October, after Trump invaded Venezuela and captured/kidnapped Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. So here’s the brilliant play Machado made: offering to gift Trump her own Nobel Peace Prize. It’s a savvy move, politically, when dealing with someone of Trump’s emotional depth (a millimeter). Only the idea is repugnant by every other measure, so the Nobel committee released a statement clarifying their longstanding rule that prizes cannot be shared or transferred.
When asked whether he would accept the honor — which he repeatedly campaigned for before Machado was awarded it in October — Trump, 79, did not give a clear answer. Still, the Nobel Committee assured that it does not matter either way.
Once awarded, a Nobel Prize “cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others,” a news release posted on the Nobel Peace Prize’s website on Friday, Jan. 9, stated.
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee and the Norwegian Nobel Institute receive a number of requests for comments regarding the permanence of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s status,” the release continued.
It added, “The facts are clear and well established. Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others. The decision is final and stands for all time.”
During Trump’s interview with Hannity, 64, the Fox News broadcaster asked the president if he planned to meet with Machado, and if he would accept her Nobel Prize, should she try to give it to him.
“Well, I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her. And I’ve heard that she wants to do that,” Trump said. “That would be a great honor.”
Machado was awarded the Nobel Prize for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela” and “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
When he was asked about Machado following Maduro’s capture in the early hours of Jan. 3, Trump said “it’d be very tough for her to be” Venezuela’s leader. He added that she “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.”
Despite Machado dedicating the award to Trump — who has repeatedly claimed that he deserves the prize for negotiating solutions to multiple “unendable wars” — her acceptance of the prize was an “ultimate sin,” a White House source told the Post.
“If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” the source said.
I thought Jimmy Kimmel nailed it last week when he said Trump stole the plot of the 1997 movie Wag the Dog by starting a global conflict (Venezuela) to distract from his own sex scandal (Epstein). But is this the real reason Trump invaded Venezuela — because he’s still stupidly obsessed with getting a prize he (most definitely) hasn’t earned? If anyone has the moral compass to commit such a petty, illegal act, it’s Donald Jennifer Trump. And that quote from the White House “source” was just utterly revolting, that Machado should have told the Nobel committee, “No thanks, this one belongs to Trump.”
Photos credit: Avalon.red and Getty
This is so embarassing to the USA. The magat morons gleefully elected a moron obsessed with stealing valor from the Democratic presidents and erasing their legacy. He literally tore down the East Wing because it was so closely associated with JFK and FDR and the Republikkkans just passively continue to follow him off a cliff. He didn’t even know what the Noble Peace Prize was before Obama won it. Lort. Release the Epstein files already.
Embarrassing? As someone who lives in the country between the US and Greenland I’m feeling a hell of a lot more than secondhand embarrassment right now. The reaction to this kind of “take what I want behaviour” should be horror.