President Trump was courteous toward Norway during his first term, describing it as a country the United States should accept more immigrants from. But on Sunday, two weeks after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2026 Peace Prize, he disparaged the country using a vulgar term for an outhouse.
“Frankly, Norway sucks,” Mr. Trump said at a campaign rally in Port Huron, Mich., on Sunday. “Norway has become a shithouse country, actually.”
He suggested that the United States should accept fewer Norwegian immigrants, saying, “I didn’t get the Nobel Prize.”
“So I don’t want anybody from Norway,” the president continued. “I don’t want anything to do with Norway.”
The Nobel Peace Prize — which the president has openly campaigned for — was awarded in Oslo to Navi Pillay, a South African human rights lawyer.
Mr. Trump’s remarks were met with bewilderment and exasperation in Norway, where top government officials have repeatedly said that they do not have influence over who is awarded the Peace Prize.
“He knows very well that the Nobel committee is independent,” Espen Barth Eide, the Norwegian foreign minister, told the country’s public broadcaster NRK on Monday. “We have reminded him of that, in case anyone is wondering, and that is still the case.”
Norwegians on social media expressed their dismay at Mr. Trump’s remarks, although few seemed surprised. Some pointed out that Mr. Trump had described Norway in 2018 in glowing terms that were racially tinged when he contrasted the country with Haiti.
Norwegians generally view Mr. Trump’s public comments with some skepticism, said Eirik Lokke, an analyst at Civita, a centrist think tank in Oslo.
“We have simply grown accustomed to his erratic behavior and tend not to take every outburst too seriously,” he said.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement on Monday that it was “entirely independent of the Norwegian government.”
Norway’s Parliament appoints the committee’s five members for six-year terms. To protect the organization’s independence, members of the government have been barred from sitting on the committee since 1936 and incumbent lawmakers since 1977.
Mr. Trump has openly jockeyed for the Peace Prize for about a decade, mentioning it in dozens of interviews and speeches and also complaining about it privately. He described the committee’s decision this month to award Ms. Pillay the 2026 prize as “an indelible stain on Norway.”
In its announcement on Oct. 9, the Nobel committee said it was honoring Ms. Pillay, 85, for her efforts to promote international law. Over the years, she served as a top U.N. official and a judge on the International Criminal Court. Last year, she led a U.N. commission on Israel that said it was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a finding that Israel rejected.
At the rally on Sunday in Michigan, where the Trump ally Mike Rogers is locked in a close Senate contest with the Democrat Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the president returned again to the subject of the Nobel Prize, indicating that he had expected to be awarded it while also suggesting he had been too busy to give the issue much attention.
He repeated his claim that he had settled eight wars, which he has previously suggested should be rewarded with eight Nobel Peace Prizes. Several of the wars he has previously cited, including those between Israel and Hamas and between Israel and Iran, remain unresolved.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
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