As tough as it was for the liberal media to swallow Trump's 2016 and 2024 presidential election wins, imagine their absolute horror if Trump were to win the Nobel Peace Prize! And yet . . .
On today's Morning Joe, MSNBC commentator and Washington Post editor David Ignatius, noting the "amazing agenda" of Trump's peace efforts around the world, said there was "something to" the notion of Trump winning the Peace Prize.
Ignatius noted that Trump has "the ambition to be a peacemaker. He has this big ambition that the United States will play a decisive role" [in forging peace around the world.]
"Thank goodness," said Ignatius, that Trump got involved in achieving a cease-fire between nuclear powers India and Pakistan, noting that "the White House, Secretary Rubio, did a pretty good job of calming things down."
Finally, Ignatius broke the news to Morning Joe's largely liberal audience:
"I would say to viewers of this program, the efforts that Trump is making generally are positive."
Tough for the viewers to take, no doubt. But small potatoes compared to the outright catastrophe in liberal land if Orange Man Bad were to someday make the journey to that award ceremony in Oslo!
And it wasn't just Ignatius with positive words for Trump. Co-host Scarborough commended Trump on the trade negotiations with the U.K.:
Quite a busy weekend for the White House on foreign policy issues. Of course, on Friday, we were talking about the deal between the United States and the UK. A lot of people tried to sort of brush that aside. I actually said on Friday I thought that was going to be significant. And it was sort of a hat tip to the other countries that the White House was open for business. They were willing to make deals.
"And then, of course, we saw that with China. But also, we woke up to the news Saturday morning, actually good news, that there had been at least a ceasefire, not peace, but a ceasefire brokered between two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. President Trump making that announcement on Saturday morning," he added.
If Trump were to win the Nobel Peace Prize, it would be for actually achieving peaceful outcomes around the world. That would be in stark contrast to the Nobel committee's premature awarding of the Prize to Barack Obama in 2009. Obama failed to live up to the award, notably doing nothing when Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad crossed Obama's declared "red line" on the use of chemical weapons on Syrian civilians. Similarly, Obama didn't lift a finger when Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
MSNBC' s Morning Joe
5/12/25
6:18 am EDTJOE SCARBOROUGH: Quite a busy weekend for the White House on foreign policy issues. Of course, on Friday, we were talking about the deal between the United States and the UK. A lot of people tried to sort of brush that aside. I actually said on Friday I thought that was going to be significant. And it was sort of a hat tip to the other countries that the White House was open for business. They were willing to make deals.
And then, of course, we saw that with China. But also, we woke up to the news Saturday morning, actually good news, that there had been at least a ceasefire, not peace, but a ceasefire brokered between two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. President Trump making that announcement on Saturday morning.
. . .
KATTY KAY: You look at everything that happened over the course of the weekend. You had the China-U.S. talks over tariffs. You had the India talks. You had the U.K. deal. You had the news coming out of the Middle East that the last remaining American Israeli hostage would be released, who's still alive.A lot happening over the course of the weekend. When you look at all of that, David, what strikes you as most important? What should we focusing on?
DAVID IGNATIUS: So, Katty, the first thing is, for an administration that talked about pulling back from the world, they're in pretty deep. And thank goodness.
I'm one who believes that American leadership in the world matters in precisely moments like this, when you have a nuclear flare-up between India and Pakistan that could escalate into real catastrophe.
Who's going to intervene to negotiate that?. It turns out, in this case, as in the past, the United States. And from everything I can see, the White House, Secretary Rubio, did a pretty good job of calming things down.
. . .
Here's what I'd say as I look at this amazing agenda of negotiations that are going on. First, I see the ambition that Donald Trump has to be a peacemaker. We like to joke about how he wants to win the Nobel Prize, and if he doesn't win it in Ukraine, well, he's going to go over to Iran.
But there is something to that. He has this big ambition that the United States will play a decisive role.
. . .
In sum, I would say to viewers of this program, the efforts that Trump is making generally are positive. We'll see this week whether the Ukraine negotiations can actually move forward, as Trump said in his tweet yesterday. We'll see better when they meet on Thursday if Russia's serious. And if it isn't, then we'll take appropriate steps.
So, you know, finally, we should say something about China. That's the biggest trading relationship in the world. It looked like it was going right in the trash bin. And the agreement that was announced by our Treasury Secretary to cut tariffs back to 10%, one measure is that, last I looked this morning, that S&P 500 futures were up about 3%. That's a big gain. And that says, for the financial markets, phew. We're glad that this is not heading to further catastrophe
