Trump Calls the Nobel an Indelible Stain on Norway
At a rally in Syracuse, the president said he had never heard of the “mystery person” who won the Peace Prize, called the award “an indelible stain on the country of Norway” and added “we will not forget”. The winner, Navi Pillay, is a former judge of the court his administration sanctioned hours after her prize was announced.
He went further, saying the prize had been “forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilisation”, and repeated without evidence that he had settled eight wars. The Nobel committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes had said Ms Pillay’s work was “instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted”. Marco Rubio, announcing sanctions on the International Criminal Court as an institution, said: “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC,” and called on allied signatories, Britain among them, to rein it in. They have declined in writing. The foreign ministers of Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom say they “regret and strongly disagree with the announcement of sanctions”, that the measures “will have a significant impact on the Court’s work, its dedicated staff and their families”, and that they will “continue to work together to support the Court’s vital work”. António Guterres called the sanctions “a serious blow to our collective pursuit of international criminal justice”; Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed them. Ms Pillay, reacting from the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg, said it “must be a joke”, then offered to share the prize with Mr Trump if the applause went on.