The Nobel That Never Rings

When Trump cold-calls Oslo for a peace prize he never earned — and drags the world through his vanity play.

You almost have to admire it. The audacity. Imagine calling up Norway’s finance minister—mid-walk, no less—and asking, casually, whether you can get the Nobel Peace Prize. Just because Obama has one. As if prizes were handed out like hotel upgrades: “I’ll take the suite with breakfast… and the Nobel on top, thank you.”

This, while simultaneously slapping tariffs on Norway. It’s diplomacy by ransom note: give me the medal, or pay at the port. Somewhere in Oslo, the minister must have stared at the phone, wondering if he had just been prank-called by a parody account.

But no, it was Trump—our Shakespearean farce of a president, always starring in a tragedy written only for his own ego. More Narcissus than Narcissus himself, staring into the pool and demanding the reflection applaud.

Obama’s Nobel, yes, was undeserved. Premature. But the man who received it never begged for it. He carried it with dignity, as a symbol of hope. Trump, by contrast, debased the very idea of peace by dialing Oslo like a late-night telemarketer. One man had too much prize for too little deed. The other, no deed at all, but an appetite for medals that trumps even Caligula’s demand for divine honors.

The Alaska Waltz with Putin

Fast-forward to August 2025. Alaska. (Few days ago as I am writing this). Red carpets, fighter jets roaring overhead, Trump basking in his own theater. Across from him: Vladimir Putin. A man who plays chess while Trump struggles to stack checkers without swallowing the pieces.

Three hours of spectacle. Three hours of Trump grinning for cameras, convinced history is watching him rewrite the script. And yet—nothing. No ceasefire. No concessions. No progress.

Putin left with the optics of legitimacy. Trump left with a press conference of toddler superlatives: “great,” “tremendous,” “historic.” The vocabulary of a man who thinks adjectives are outcomes.

Even Zelensky wasn’t invited. Imagine it: negotiating Ukraine’s future without Ukraine. That’s not statesmanship. That’s Nero fiddling on Alaskan ice, with the fire spreading elsewhere.

Negotiation, Trump-Style

Remember “the art of the deal”? Turns out the art is simple:

Shout. Posture. Declare victory. Leave empty-handed.

• With Putin: fawning smiles, no results.
• With Zelensky: public humiliation, turning solidarity into a bullying session.
• With allies: tariffs, insults, broken trust.

This is not negotiation. This is a man trying to sell timeshares at a funeral.

JD Vance: The Echo with Eyeliner

And then there’s JD Vance. Once the hillbilly chronicler, now the apprentice bully. Watching him at Trump’s side is like watching a bad understudy trying too hard to impress the lead actor. The words repeat, the gestures mimic, the tone sneers just a half-second after Trump’s — like an echo rehearsed in a mirror.

And those eyes — rimmed in black eyeliner — don’t project conviction so much as cheap stagecraft. Not gravitas, but costume. He isn’t absorbing humiliation; he’s dishing it out, eager to prove he belongs in the cruelty business.

If Caligula had his horse, Trump has his Vance — a sidekick painted up for a part in a tragedy, proud to be the co-bully at the emperor’s table.

The Irony of History

South Korea impeached two presidents in recent memory—leaders guilty of corruption, yes, but on a scale that looks almost quaint compared to Trump’s gold-plated excess.

Here, corruption is not whispered. It’s performed live, daily, on television. No shame, no mask, just raw greed dressed in flags. And yet impeachment lingers as rumor, as if America has forgotten the word.

Finish Him

Trump doesn’t just weaken alliances. He corrodes the very idea of leadership. He treats the presidency as a private brand extension, a global Trump Tower with nuclear codes.

Putin does not take him seriously. Zelensky does not dignify him. America’s allies roll their eyes behind closed doors, the way you do when a neighbor insists he’s building a spaceship in his garage.

The tragedy isn’t Trump’s vanity. It’s that the world pays the bill:

• trust among nations, fractured;
• hope, diminished;
• migrants, locked in cages beside hardened criminals, punished not for crimes, but for existence.

Hubris on this scale no longer fits the old word “narcissism.” We need a new one: Trumpism — vanity so bloated it eclipses reason, morality, and history itself.

America, it is on you! Impeach him midterm—or better yet, tomorrow! Every day that passes is another summit of nothing, another headline of self-enrichment, another verse in this grotesque tragedy that even Sophocles might have thought too implausible to stage.

Because right now, the only prize Trump is qualified for is this:

“Most Expensive Phone Bill While Begging for a Nobel.”