By Abe Greenwald
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
If you don’t understand why Donald Trump would risk
blowing up NATO and the entire Western alliance over a snub by the Nobel Peace
Prize Committee, then you don’t understand Donald Trump and what makes him
tick. The great paradox of Trump’s iconoclasm is that he despises the
establishment only because the establishment never accepted him as a
full-fledged member with all the accompanying benefits. That’s what he’s wanted
all along—to be one of them.
What use would a genuine anti-establishment American have
for a ceremonial Norwegian medal that’s been bestowed on such champions of
peace as, for example, Yasser Arafat? In any genuine indictment of the corrupt
establishment, the Nobel would be adduced as Exhibit A. Yet it tops Trump’s
list of desiderata. Why? Because he covets it as proof of his finally being
welcomed, without caveats, into the ranks of the beautiful people.
To be sure, Trump’s wealth and celebrity long ago put him
in regular proximity to establishment figures and institutions. But those
figures and institutions always looked at him as a gauche party crasher. When
they invited him to the party, it was because they had to.
I’m sure Trump sincerely enjoys NASCAR races,
professional wrestling bouts, and mixed martial arts fights. But he doubtless
became a staple at all such events in part because these popular, but
non-coastal, spectacles are run by and packed with people who celebrate him as
a genuine superstar. When it comes to the coastal elite, let alone the European
haut monde, it’s a different story.
Trump never received the universally fawning press
coverage that real A-listers can expect, even at their worst moments. Decades
before he entered politics, he was the perpetual object of sneers and jokes
about his hair, his hands, his tacky tastes, his rollercoaster love life, and
his dubious business claims. Indeed, it seems he finally entered politics
because he was roasted alive at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner by
Barack Obama, who was the sitting emperor of the international elite. In this
case, Trump was invited to the party—to be humiliated. And that was one
indignity too far.
The resentment fueled his rise straight to the Oval
Office. But, as president, he was still treated like trash by the nation’s
tastemakers. Even worse, he didn’t get reelected. In a country that had just
elected three diverse presidents to two terms, this was a catastrophic blow. So
Trump pronounced the election rigged and planned his comeback.
This time around, he’s pushing himself as the peace
president, the man who “stopped 8 Wars PLUS.” There’s a considerable amount of
truth in Trump’s claim. But stopping or preventing conflicts is usually
considered desirable because it spares innocent lives—not because it earns the
praise of a clueless committee in Oslo. There is, however, nothing usual about
Trump. Even his desire to be acknowledged by the elite—a somewhat universal
human sentiment—is, in him, a monomania. The frightening thing is he doesn’t
understand that he’ll never get the kind of uncritical acceptance he craves.
Which means his fury over being locked out will never die. We have three more
years to see just what that fury can inflict.
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