Newsmax's Losing Nobel Battle

Newsmax lobbied hard for Donald Trump to win a Nobel Peace Prize == and it couldn't be placated at the thought of a manufactured cnsolation prize.

Dec 30, 2025

Newsmax columnists spent a good part of this year lobbying for Donald Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, while also taking shots at Barack Obama for having won it. Here are some examples of that:

Four Presidents of the United States were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, including, most recently, Barack Obama in 2009. He won for “his efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation.”
Incredibly, Barack Obama was nominated for the award just a few days after he was inaugurated and before he attained any significant achievements.
Unfortunately, Obama did not fulfill the lofty expectations of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. When he left office in 2017, the world was more dangerous than it was at the start of his presidency.
[…]
Unlike Obama, who refused to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, Trump met with “Little Rocket Man” three times. These summits helped lessen tensions and improve relations between the two countries.
In this first term as president, Trump also brokered the historic Abraham Accords, which established diplomatic relations between Israel and four Arab nations: United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. He also negotiated a historic economic agreement between Serbia and Kosovo, two countries on the verge of war.
[…]
It seems clear, there is one champion peacemaker in the world, Donald Trump. Time for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to acknowledge reality.

— Jeff Crouere, May 12 column

From the Mideast to South and East Asia, Central and East Africa, and the Balkans, President Donald Trump is pursuing a mission to promote stability and peace throughout the world.
And while iconic leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. championed global peace, President Trump stands apart — unlike any other leader in our lifetime.

And he does so by employing his commanding presence and unmatched negotiating skills to bring that vision closer to reality.
Though many have spoken of peace, it’s taken a results-oriented billionaire businessperson like Trump to come closest to achieving it.
That is why a Louisiana-based Indian Tribe is nominating President Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, using their status as a sovereign nation to meet the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s nomination criteria — highlighting his “role in advancing global peace amid international conflicts and economic uncertainty.”
[…]
While former President Obama received the prize, his tenure made the world more dangerous – alienating allies and emboldening adversaries, which contributed to increased global instability.
As the Norwegian Nobel Committee reviews the 2026 nominations, they must remember that the prize is awarded to those who truly deserve and have earned it.
Choosing wisely will make the world not only safer but significantly better off.

— Mark Vargas, July 10 column

By any objective standard, it’s hard to imagine any other individual or institution in the world today that has “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind in the field of peace,” which is the prize’s only criterion according to the will of its founder, the 19th century Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel.
Trump is aware of this and has stated both publicly and privately that he would be honored to receive the prize.
Other national leaders, who figure in the category of people eligible to nominate candidates, agree with him.
[…]
Barack Obama won the 2009 prize for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and foster cooperation between nations,” puzzlingly despite having only been elected to the presidency in November 2008 and assumed office just eleven days before the Jan. 31 nomination deadline for the following year’s prize.
Trump’s vastly greater second administration achievements and the nominations based on them postdate Jan. 31, 2025, so he may have to wait until next year for recognition.
But the fact remains that millions globally have benefited from his peaceful diplomacy in a way that simply no one else can claim.
If the Norwegian committee that grants the Nobel Peace Prize has any integrity, it will grant him the recognition he deserves.

— Paul du Quenoy, Sept. 3 Newsmax column

This month the Nobel Prize Committee is expected to announce the recipients for this year’s Nobel prizes.
The committee should have awarded President Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize five years ago for brokering the Abraham Accords, which isolated Iran, the number-one state sponsor of terrorism, from much of the rest of the Arab world.
In the months since Trump’s White House return, he’s been even busier, and attained even greater results.
[…]
And for all of those reasons, the Nobel Prize Committee has no choice but to present Trump with what it denied him five years ago — the Nobel Peace Prize.

— Michael Dorstewitz, Oct. 1 Newsmax column

Thanks for reading ConWebWatch! This post is public so feel free to share it.

That was joined by sycophantic articles quoting people touting the same:

Trump toady Dick Morris contributed to the campaign as well during an Aug. 16 TV appearance:

Political strategist Dick Morris told Newsmax on Saturday that President Donald Trump could build “irresistible momentum” toward a Nobel Peace Prize if he successfully ends the war in Ukraine.
[…]
Morris, author of “The Return: Trump’s Big 2024 Comeback,” added that Trump’s efforts to resolve the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine could set the stage for international recognition.
“If he does settle this Ukraine war, I think there’s a real chance that there will be an irresistible momentum for him to have, get a Nobel Peace Prize, even though that’s a very biased, left-wing committee.
“The momentum might become irresistible,” he said.

Newsmax also published a wire article noting that the Nobel committee “cannot be swayed” by the aggressive pro-Trump lobbying campaign.

Failure to win

Newsmax’s campaign to get Trump awarded the Nobel Peace Prize had the occasional roadblock, such as a Sept. 12 wire article quoting the prize committee saying it won’t be swayed by the pro-Trump lobbying campaign, as well as an Oct. 3 wire article noting that Trump was unlikely to win. Still, Newsmax’s lobbying continued:

There were also a couple articles on Trump himself opining on the award:

When Trump didn’t win, Sandy Fitzgerald lamented in an Oct. 10 article:

Despite President Donald Trump’s unrelenting work to stop overseas wars and his fight to preserve democracy in the United States — including coming under bullet fire while running for the White House in 2024 — the Nobel Peace Prize has gone elsewhere once again, this time to Venezuelan opposition activist Maria Corina Machado.
However, Trump’s case for the prestigious award next year is growing stronger, considering his work toward peace in Gaza and Ukraine and other factors.
The nomination deadline was Feb. 1, 2025, and the White House is condemning what it calls a political snub after the Nobel Committee on Friday awarded the prize to 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.”
[…]
“Only four U.S. presidents — Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama — have won the Nobel Peace Prize,” said Newsmax’s Rob Astorino, host of “Saturday Agenda.” “Trump should be the fifth. He’s the most consequential president in our lifetime, possibly in our country’s history.”

Newsmax also made sure to hype grousing about it:

Newsmax then hyped new peace prize nominations for Trump:

An Oct. 19 article by Eric Mack touted some reflected glory from the person who did win the Nobel Peace Prize:

Nobel Prize winner María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader, might have beaten out President Donald Trump for the coveted award, but she says she is on the same team as Trump in striking at the corruption, repression, and persecution under dictator Nicolás Maduro.
“President Trump has made decisions regarding the dismantling of a narcoterrorist structure and I want to insist on this, it was Maduro who declared the war on us,” Machado told NBC News, from her undisclosed hideout, where she has been for 14 months fearing Maduro’s reprisal.
“If Maduro will stop this war by moving out and facilitating a transition to democracy. We do need the help of other countries and the leadership of President Trump to stop this war, because it is about saving millions of lives.”

Mack then editorialized: “Trump is answering her call for international assistance that has fallen on deaf ears for far too long.”

Still bitter

Newsmax columnists were upset that the Nobel Peace Prize wasn’t won by Trump and weren’t swayed by lobbying from right-wingers like Newsmax. Michael Dorstewitz grumbled in an Oct. 10 column:

Although a Trump Nobel Pease [sic] Prize appeared certain, the Nobel committee awarded it to Venezuelan opposition activist Maria Corina Machado.
But while Trump appeared to be in the running, a broadcast news network tried to focus public attention elsewhere, to an earlier administration.
After brokering a historic ceasefire between Israel and Hamas terrorists Wednesday, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog called for President Donald Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

He then whined that ABC reminded people that President Obama won one:

The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank, gave ABC News another reminder.
“Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is arguably the biggest joke in the history of the award,” Heritage said.
“In the committee’s own words, they selected the 44th president for his ‘efforts,’ ‘vision,’ and ‘appeal’ for peace, not for actually achieving any kind of peace.”
Heritage concluded, “If they have any sense, they would try to redeem themselves by awarding the 45th and 47th president the Nobel Peace Prize for the numerous wars and international conflicts he has helped negotiate ends to.”

Dorstewitz offered no reason why a right-wing organization’s whining that a non-right-winger won the prize should be trusted.

Craig Shirley was in suck-up hagiography mode in his Oct. 16 column:

Trump’s record of success is dizzying (the border, inflation, the economy and now . . . Mideast peace).
I won’t list it all here, except to dwell on the Abraham Accords and the new Mideast peace agreement. Who would have thought 20 years ago that there would be Arab embassies in Israel?
This is a monumental achievement deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize alone, just as General Douglas MacArthur’s administration of the rebuilding of Japan post World War II was also deserving of a Nobel Prize.
President Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot as did John Paul II.
Was it because they were conservatives?
The Nobel Committee preferred to give its prize to a president, nearly two decades ago, based on racial preferences, as opposed to whether Barack Obama truly deserved to receive one of the Nobel Committee’s highest recognitions.
His race will always be a factor in calculating his importance to history for liberals, more interested in identity, than it merits.
Seemingly Obama’s only skill was in the study of himself, which is why I call him the nation’s “first Facebook president.”
He never met a first person pronoun he did not like.
[…]
The great philosopher Charles Adams postulated, “Do the times make the man, or does the man make the times?”
It was intended to stimulate debate but in the case of Donald Trump, there is no debate.
Trump makes the times he lives in.

Newsmax, meanwhile, had to take comfort in other random people promising to nominate Trump for next year’s prize, as in this stenographic Oct. 28 article by Theodore Bunker:

The White House announced Tuesday that Japan’s newly elected prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, will nominate President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
A White House official confirmed to The New York Post that during Trump’s trip to Tokyo, where he met with Takaichi and pledged strong alliance ties, the prime minister “told the president she nominated him and presented him with the papers” for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
“In such a short period of time the world started to enjoy more peace,” Takaichi said in remarks to reporters on Tuesday.
[…]
Newsweek noted that Trump has become a frequent subject of Nobel nomination talk, with leaders from Cambodia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Israel among those backing him this year alone.

This was also repeated in a wire article published the previous day.

Newsmax even hyped a possible consolation prize in a Nov. 6 article:

President Donald Trump might become the first recipient of a new FIFA Peace Prize to be presented at the World Cup draw in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 5, according to FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
FIFA announced the award Wednesday, saying it will honor “exceptional actions for peace and unity” amid global tensions.
[…]
Trump, previously nominated multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize, lost this year’s award to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.

Look for Newsmax to continue to be bitter about this until he actually wins a Nobel Peace Prize — and a manufactured soccer prize will not placate them.

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?