Trump's quest for the Nobel Peace Prize falls short again despite high-profile nominations

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday despite jockeying from his fellow Republicans, various world leaders and — most vocally — himself.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the prize, after she was nominated last year by a group that included then-Sen. Marco Rubio, who is now Trump’s secretary of state. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it was honoring Machado “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Machado, however, said she wanted to dedicate the win to Trump, along with the people of her country, as she praised the president for support of her cause.

Her campaign manager Magalli Meda confirmed that Trump congratulated Machado in a phone call Friday.

At the White House later, Trump listed the peace efforts he’d made while in office this year —something that's become a frequent habit as he appears before the media — and was wistful as he spoke about Machado winning.

“The person who actually got the Nobel Prize called me and said, ‘I’m accepting this in honor of you because you really deserved it.’” he said.

“I didn’t say, ‘Then give it to me,’” he added, drawing chuckles from his advisers. “I think she might have. She was very nice.”

He also suggested the award, which has a Feb. 1 deadline for nominations, was given out for 2024 achievements.

“You could also say it was given out for ’24, and I was running for office in ’24,” Trump said.

The tone from the White House was much sourer early Friday, shortly after the award was announced. White House communications director Steven Cheung said members of “the Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace" because they didn't recognize Trump, especially after the Gaza ceasefire deal his administration helped strike this week.

Machado's opposition to President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela aligns with the Trump administration's own stance on Venezuela, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously praised her as “the personification of resilience, tenacity, and patriotism.”

Trump, who has long coveted the prestigious prize, has been outspoken about his desire for the honor during both of his presidential terms, particularly lately as he takes credit for ending conflicts around the world. The Republican president has also expressed doubts that the Nobel committee would ever grant him the award.

Although Trump received nominations for the prize, many of them occurred after the February deadline for the 2025 award, which fell just a week and a half into his second term. His name was, however, put forward in December by Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney of New York, her office said in a statement, for his brokering of the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states in 2020.

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said the committee has seen various campaigns in its long history of awarding the peace prize.

“We receive thousands and thousands of letters every year of people wanting to say what for them leads to peace,” he said. “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 peace prize, first awarded in 1901, was created partly to encourage ongoing peace efforts. Alfred Nobel stipulated in his will that the prize should go to someone “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Three sitting U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and Barack Obama in 2009. Jimmy Carter won the prize in 2002, a full two decades after leaving office. Former Vice President Al Gore received the prize in 2007.

Obama, a Democrat who was a focus of Trump's attacks well before the Republican was elected, won the prize early in his tenure as president.

“They gave it to Obama for doing absolutely nothing but destroying our country,” Trump said Thursday.

As one of his reasons for deserving the award, Trump often says he has ended seven wars, though some of the conflicts the president claims to have resolved were merely tensions and his role in easing them is disputed.

But while there is hope for the end to Israel and Hamas’ war, with Israel saying a ceasefire agreement with Hamas came into effect Friday, much remains uncertain about the aspects of the broader plan, including whether and how Hamas will disarm and who will govern Gaza. And little progress seems to have been made in the Russia-Ukraine war, a conflict Trump claimed during the 2024 campaign that he could end in one day.

As Trump pushes for peaceful resolutions to some conflicts abroad, the country he governs remains deeply divided and politically fraught. Trump has kicked off what he hopes to be the largest deportation program in American history to remove immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. He is using the levers of government, including the Justice Department, to go after his perceived political enemies. He has sent the military into U.S. cities over local opposition to stop crime and crack down on immigration enforcement.

Internationally, he also touched off global trade wars with his on-again, off-again tariffs, which he wields as a threat to bend other countries and companies to his will. He asserted presidential war powers by declaring cartels to be unlawful combatants and launching lethal strikes on boats in the Caribbean that he alleged were carrying drugs.

The full list of people nominated is secret, but anyone who submits a nomination is free to talk about it. Trump's detractors say supporters, foreign leaders and others are submitting Trump's name for nomination for the prize — and announcing it publicly — not because he deserves it but because they see it as a way to manipulate him and stay in his good graces.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who this summer said he was nominating Trump for the prize, on Friday reposted Cheung’s response with the comment: “The Nobel Committee talks about peace. President @realDonaldTrump makes it happen.”

“The facts speak for themselves,” Netanyahu's office said on X. “President #Trump deserves it.”

The authoritarian president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, said Trump deserved the prize and said it was “sheer stupidity” for him not to receive it.

Lukashenko, whose government has faced sweeping Western sanctions for its brutal crackdown on critics after a contested 2020 election, had a phone call with Trump in August that sparked speculation of a possible thaw in relations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who sent troops to Ukraine in 2022 and has sought to show alignment with Trump, told reporters in Taijikistan on Friday that it’s not up to him to judge whether Trump should have received the prize, but he praised the ceasefire deal for Gaza.

He also criticized the Nobel Committee’s prior decisions, saying it has in the past awarded the prize to those who have done little to advance global peace.

Putin's remarks nearly echoed the comments Trump made about Obama, and the U.S. leader responded to his Russian counterpart's praise by posting on social media, “Thank you to President Putin!”

Others who formally submitted a nomination for Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize — but after this year's deadline — include Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Pakistan's government, all citing his work in helping end conflicts in their regions.

Associated Press writers Chris Megerian in Washington, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Regina Garcia Cano in Mexico City and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado waves from atop a truck during the closing election campaign rally for presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, July 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

FILE - Activists carry signs during a protest against President Donald Trump's federal takeover of policing of the District of Columbia, Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

FILE - President Donald Trump departs following a joint press conference with Russia's President Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court on Monday asked for a life sentence for a leader of the feared Janjaweed militia convicted of playing a major role in a campaign of atrocities committed in the Sudanese region of Darfur more than 20 years ago — including ordering mass executions and bludgeoning two prisoners to death with an ax.

“You literally have an axe murderer before you,” prosecutor Julian Nicholls told judges in The Hague as Ali Muhammad Ali Abd–Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, looked on.

Last month, Abd–Al-Rahman was convicted of 27 counts, including mass murders and rapes, for leading Janjaweed militia forces that went on a campaign of killing and destruction in 2003-2004. It was the first time the court had convicted a suspect of crimes in Darfur.

“He committed these crimes knowingly, willfully, and with, the evidence shows, enthusiasm and vigor,” Nicholls said.

Abd–Al-Rahman pleaded innocent to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity when his trial opened in April 2022 and argued he was not the person known as Ali Kushayb. The judges rejected that defense, saying he even identified himself by his name and nickname in a video when he surrendered.

The defense will take the floor later in the week and has asked for a seven-year sentence, which would allow the 76-year-old to be released in the next 18 months, considering time served.

Abd–Al-Rahman surrendered to authorities in the Central African Republic, near the border with Sudan, in 2020.

Rebels from Darfur’s ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of oppression by the Arab-dominated government in the capital, Khartoum.

Then-President Omar al-Bashir’s government responded with a scorched-earth campaign of aerial bombings and raids by the Janjaweed, who often attacked at dawn, sweeping into villages on horseback or camelback.

Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes in Darfur over the years. Al-Bashir has been charged by the ICC with crimes including genocide, but he has not been handed over to face justice in The Hague, despite being ousted from power and detained.

The sentencing hearing comes as Sudan has plunged into further violence. Last week, the U.N.’s top human rights body held a one-day special session to highlight hundreds of killings at a hospital in Sudan’s Darfur region and other atrocities blamed on paramilitary forces fighting the army in the northeast African country.

The military and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, went to war in 2023, when tensions erupted between them. The army and RSF are former allies that were supposed to oversee a democratic transition after a 2019 uprising.

The latest fighting has killed at least 40,000 people, according to the World Health Organization, and displaced 12 million others.

FILE - Ali Muhammad Ali Abd–Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, attends a hearing at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Oct. 6, 2025. (Piroschka van de Wouw/Pool Photo via AP, File)