When I coached Little League Baseball, we always had a year-end awards ceremony, where I got to hand out Participation Awards to the members of my team. Those so-called awards were usually not for winning or losing, but for playing. Whether we went undefeated or never crossed home plate, everyone walked away clutching the same little plastic monument to mediocrity.
I was not an enthusiastic supporter of such trophies, and most of the kids already had several for other sports in which they had participated.
So, déjà vu has set in with the multiple Trump Peace awards. Of course they are not Participation Awards. They seem more like Solicitation Awards, or Desperation or Humiliation Awards.
First, Donald J. Trump won the inaugural, soon to be prestigious, FIFA Soccer Peace Prize. No one had ever won it before, because it wasn’t invented until President Trump lobbied for it. While it may seem unorthodox for a soccer organization to award a peace prize to a U.S. president, we are in times, as we have often heard, unlike any we’ve seen before.
When the president recovered from the initial shock of winning, he held up the accompanying award certificate and quickly draped the medal around his neck. He was beside himself with pride and why wouldn’t he be? What an honor!! Bringing peace to the soccer world.
But wait. That was just Act One. The true highlight of this peace award saga came on Thursday, when Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, willingly parted with her own Nobel medal in favor of Mr. Trump.
Her act, seemingly a ransom paid to Trump for the anticipated release of the Venezuelan presidency, was unsuccessful. Sadly, the ransom was paid, without results. Trump has restated his support for Nicolás Maduro’s team even after the arrest of Maduro.
In her presentation to Trump, Machado noted that she was donating her prize to him as a gesture of gratitude for his “unique commitment” to freedom, obviously choosing her words carefully, and accurately. Once again, Trump was glowing; nothing gets him going like an award, even if it’s a solicitation award. The bet here is that it’s already hanging on a White House wall somewhere, possibly knocking a Jefferson portrait to the basement, or the East Wing (whoops, not there).
Let’s unpack these two achievements.
When the Nobel Committee declined to crown Trump with their main prize last year, a misstep that Trump has pointed out about 400 times, FIFA saw an opportunity and announced their own brand-new peace award. FIFA listened to the Nobel folks as they doubled down on those outdated rules about their award not being transferable, and FIFA acted. Good for them.
After all, how could peace efforts be better rewarded than through a soccer organization’s newly created medal? And further credit to FIFA for not rescinding the award despite 16,000 ticket cancellations for World Cup tickets in protest of Trump’s win.
The bigger event came Thursday. Ms. Machado, who won the Nobel for her advocacy of democracy in Venezuela, presented her medal to the president in the White House, in a gesture described as “symbolic” and “possibly career-boosting.” Nothing says “peace” like a transnational medal handoff in the Oval Office.
Technically, Trump is NOT a Nobel laureate, despite holding the physical medal, and the Nobel folks documented that fact. But if you saw his smile as Trump held the award, you’d know that technically he does not care. Who needs actual titles when you’ve got Truth Social validation and a glossy White House photo?
So, here’s to you, Mr. President. You are a champion of peace, a ruler of trophies. You have won peace prizes from both a sports federation and a needy foreign opposition leader, a combination, as you might say, is the likes of which no one has ever seen. Your legacy will be studied for future generations, in history classes, in debates on democracy, and in late-night monologues.
Before closing, let’s get serious for just a moment. The spectacles we’ve seen in these peace awards ceremonies can be funny. An American President pumping up his chest and bragging about his peace achievements, while holding one contrived award and one borrowed one, plays well for comedy on Late-Night. But it also impacts a country’s reputation on the world stage. The world laughs and that’s sad.
So, a final note to the Nobel committee: You should add a Nobel Award for Math. As the president continues to cut healthcare costs by 200, 500, 1200 percent, he would be an absolute shoe-in.
Curt MacRae is a resident of Coldwater, MI and publishes opinion columns regularly.
To be notified by email when a column is published, or to offer feedback: rantsbymac@gmail.com
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