Trump calls Norway a 'shithole country' after Nobel Peace Prize goes to Navi Pillay

Trump's remarks at Port Huron

President Donald Trump called Norway a 'shithole country' at a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday, 25 October 2026, during the final stretch of the campaign for the midterm elections on Tuesday, 3 November. He said he wanted nothing to do with Norwegians and preferred citizens of Denmark as immigrants, tying that stance directly to the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision not to award him the prize. The 2026 prize went to Navi Pillay, a South African jurist whom Trump described as someone nobody had ever heard of. He said he had resolved eight wars and had two more on the way, citing mediation between Azerbaijan and Armenia and between India and Pakistan. He claimed those efforts saved at least 30 million lives.

Attacks on Obama and Machado

Trump also complained that Barack Obama received the prize in 2009, only weeks after taking office, without knowing why he had won it. He contrasted this with Venezuelan opposition figure and Nobel laureate Maria Corina Machado, who, he said, gave him her own medal and said he had ended many wars and deserved the prize more than anyone. On social media on the day Pillay's award was announced, Trump listed further achievements he claimed, including the capture of former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the release of all Israeli hostages held by Hamas, and curbs on Iran's nuclear programme. He wrote that the prize had been discredited for good by a handful of radical ideologues he called antidemocratic and enemies of civilisation.

Background to the rally remarks

On Saturday, 24 October, at a rally in Perry, Georgia, Trump accused Democratic senator Jon Ossoff of backing a bill that would, in his account, ease the arrival of immigrants from countries he called infested with terrorism, naming Libya, Yemen, Haiti and Somalia. The Norway remarks revived the same insults against those four countries. Trump had been attacking the committee's decision for weeks, and in early October he called the missed award a permanent stain on Norway. The sequence of his remarks since then is set out below.

Norway and Libya respond

Norway's foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, reminded the public broadcaster NRK on Monday, 26 October, that the Nobel committee is independent and that Trump knows this. Eide said the point had been made to Washington and remained true. The Norwegian government declined to comment further, and Oslo has responded in a low-key way. In Libya, the Tripoli-based government summoned the US chargé d'affaires, Inga Heemink, on Sunday to hand her a formal protest note. It rejected the use of Libya and its citizens in American electoral disputes. Authorities in eastern Libya also condemned Trump's words and demanded an apology.