Donald Trump broke off from licking his wounds after losing out on this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for a lengthy digression about how one of his pro-golfer buddies has apparently has made the world a better place.
“Speaking of somebody that saves lives, don’t ever play golf with him because Keegan Bradley just walked in,” the president told reporters at White House press conference on Friday, after spying the Team USA Ryder Cup captain at the door.
“What a great job. He’s respected by those golfers like nobody, and I just want to compliment you, Keegan, was an incredible job right there,” Trump went on, apparently in reference to Keegan’s performance at this year’s tournament, held toward the end of last month, at which the U.S. lost out to Team Europe 15-13.
He did not clarify under what circumstances exactly the pro-golfer may have “saved lives” in the past.
The president’s comments came just hours after his administration learned he had not, despite a concerted and highly publicised campaign, been named this year’s recipient of perhaps the most coveted prize on the planet.
Trump’s aides have since accused the Nobel Committee of playing “politics over peace” by choosing to instead grant the award to exiled Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
In its official release, the panel said Machado had kept “the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness,” which many observers took as a jab at Trump given his increasingly authoritarian tendencies since assuming office for the second time earlier this year.
As a right-wing political figure, Machado has publicly praised Trump in the past, thanking him for his “decisive support” for Venezuela’s democracy. At his Friday press conference, Trump claimed to have spoken with Machado since the award was announced, and that she’d been similarly blindsided by the news.
“So the person who actually got the Nobel prize called today, called me and said, ‘I’m accepting this in honor of you because you really deserved it,” the president said. “A very nice thing to do. I didn’t say, ‘Then give it to me,’ though. I could have. I think she might have.”
“She was very nice. And I’ve been, you know, I’ve been helping her along the way. They need a lot of help in Venezuela, it’s a basic disaster,” he went on. “I’m happy because I saved millions of lives, many millions of lives.”
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