Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump has now achieved his fondest wish, in a manner of speaking, as he has a Nobel Peace Prize to put on his mantel. It is gold, so it will fit right in with the decor. Although, the gold is real, so maybe not. He did not get the Prize because he earned it, or because it was bestowed upon him by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. He got the prize because María Corina Machado visited the White House yesterday, and gave her medal to him.
There are a handful of Nobel laureates who really don't care about the honor at all, for various reasons. Among those who do care (which is the vast majority), the medal is basically a triviality, something that eventually ends up in a museum or some other institution (for example, Z saw Julian Schwinger's 1965 Nobel medal in the Physics department at UCLA; it's probably still on display there). If a winner has material interests, surely the large cash prize is of greater concern than the medal. And for most of them, the biggest prize is non-material: that they get to have "Nobel laureate" in front of their names for the rest of their lives (and beyond).
All of this is to say, giving away the medal was really no skin off Machado's nose. She was just buttering Trump up, so that he remains friendly to her interests in general, and maybe also so that he warms up to the idea of backing her as the next permanent leader of Venezuela. Surely, everyone must see that this is just a very high profile version of shiny beads and shallow flattery, right?
Well, everyone but Trump, that is. Here's the message that was posted to his more-gullibility-than-a-3-year-old social media platform yesterday:
It was my Great Honor to meet María Corina Machado, of Venezuela, today. She is a wonderful woman who has been through so much. María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!
We actually don't believe he wrote that himself. Do you see the detail (other than the general lack of random capitalization) that gives it away? The answer is that there is NO WAY he thinks it's important to properly append accents to foreign names, nor that he would know how to do so, even if he wanted to. Still, whoever did post it presumably had a sense of his feelings on the medal. And Trump seemed to be genuinely impressed by the silly "Champion for Freedom" award that he got from Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) a couple of years ago (which—surprise!—has never been awarded again). And he also seemed to be impressed by the silly "FIFA Peace Prize" (which was only created a month earlier, and surely will never be awarded again). So, we guess he really was impressed and pleased by Machado's gesture. It makes no sense to us, but we guess if you're a narcissist, you operate with the understanding that OF COURSE the world is falling all over itself for the opportunity to give you awards celebrating how awesome you are.
And we have absolutely no idea what this development will presage, if anything. However, we pass the news along, because it could at least plausibly lead to two outcomes. The first is that if Trump is satisfied that he now "has" a Nobel Peace Prize, just like Barack Obama's, maybe he'll stop doing reckless stuff to try to win a Nobel Peace Prize. The second is that if Machado becomes his favorite, he might start working to clear out the current Venezuelan regime (which is basically just Nicolás Maduro's people, sans Maduro) and replace them with Machado and/or the actual winner of the last presidential election in that nation, Edmundo González (who, it should be noted, was running as a proxy for Machado after the courts barred her candidacy on Maduro's orders).
It's also certainly possible that this will change nothing. Still, Trump is the only president in American history where we would seriously entertain the possibility that he cannot recognize blatant apple-polishing from a foreign leader when he sees it. (Z)