US President Donald Trump reiterated his complaints on Friday about not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, calling it a disgraceful and embarrassing decision that had left a stain on Norway, which hosts the Nobel committee.
“The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Syracuse, New York. He added that the snub was “just another sign of how Norway and all these others are ripping off our country”.
Trump unleashed on Norway hours after the committee awarded this year’s prize to Navi Pillay, a South African judge and human rights lawyer. Pillay serves as an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and last year chaired the UN commission that investigated Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza and concluded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration had committed genocide against Palestinians, a finding that the Israeli government firmly denounced. She previously served as an appeals judge on the International Criminal Court.
Trump called Pillay a “mystery person” and “a liberal person who works at the United Nations, who nobody has ever heard of” during the campaign rally. “I never heard of the person. Nobody did … I know a lot of people. I’ve never heard of this particular person. But congratulations anyway.”