The Nobel Peace Prize used to mean something. In recent years, however, it has increasingly been wielded as a political prop for the global left, awarded more for ideological alignment than tangible accomplishment. Now, President Donald Trump has forced reality to collide with that narrative. This week, Trump achieved what many thought impossible: a historic peace deal between Israel and Hamas. His efforts have earned praise from unexpected quarters, and suddenly, the idea of Trump as a serious contender for the Nobel Peace Prize is being taken seriously.
According to Oddspedia, in the wake of the peace deal, Trump's odds have surged dramatically from the long-shot territory where they sat shortly after he began his second term to being the the favorite to win it. It represents a stunning turnaround for a president who has long complained about the Nobel Committee's apparent bias against him.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even posted on X that Trump should get it.
Give @realDonaldTrump the Nobel Peace Prize - he deserves it! 🏅 pic.twitter.com/Hbuc7kmPt1
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 9, 2025
However, not everyone thinks Trump will actually win the prize.
Longtime Nobel watchers are throwing cold water on the prospect, insisting the Norwegian Nobel Committee prefers to focus on the durability of peace rather than freshly brokered agreements, along with the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that advance those goals. They argue Trump's record might actually work against him, pointing to what they describe as his disdain for multilateral institutions and his lack of enthusiasm for global climate change initiatives.
The nomination deadline passed on January 31, just days into Trump's second term, and the committee held its final meeting on Monday. Whether that timing helps or hurts Trump depends entirely on whether the committee values results or ideology.
What makes the whole spectacle especially rich is the lingering embarrassment of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, which went to Barack Obama for having done essentially nothing at all. Geir Lundestad, the former secretary of the Nobel Prize committee, admitted years later that the award failed to achieve what the committee hoped it would. "No Nobel Peace Prize ever elicited more attention than the 2009 prize to Barack Obama," Lundestad wrote in his 2015 memoir. "Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake," he continued. "In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for.”
Even Joe Scarborough acknowledged on Morning Joe this week that Obama won the prize "before he had actually done anything.”
Trump has been talking about this imbalance for years. "If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds," he said last year, referencing the Abraham Accords and other diplomatic achievements from his first term. He clearly has a point, and it goes beyond his own accomplishments. The Nobel Peace Prize has a long history of favoring left-wing beliefs and figures. Three of the four American presidents who have won the award were Democrats: Obama, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. The lone Republican was Theodore Roosevelt. Even Ronald Reagan was passed over in 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev alone received the prize for ending the Cold War, despite Reagan's pivotal role in the arms reduction talks and the summits that led to nuclear disarmament.
Many on the right considered Obama’s winning of the prize as the final nail in the coffin of the Nobel Peace Prize’s relevance. But Trump clearly wants the award, and has certainly earned it.
Trump has accomplished far more than Obama ever did, both in his first term with the Abraham Accords and now in his second with the Israel-Palestine ceasefire framework. Awarding Trump the Nobel Peace Prize would represent a long overdue course correction, a chance for the committee to de-politicize an award that has become a laughingstock. But if the committee truly wanted to restore its credibility, it would do more than just give Trump this year's prize. It would take back the one it gave Obama and hand that to Trump as well. Obama's award was undeserved then, and it looks even worse now in hindsight. Trump doesn't just deserve the Nobel Peace Prize; he deserves the award that the committee gave to Obama.
