Calling it an “indelible stain,” U.S. President Donald J. Trump sharply criticized the Nobel Committee for awarding the Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, whom he dismissed as a “mystery person.” “The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t. And this is an indelible stain on the country of Norway, and on those people who made such a disgraceful and embarrassing decision,” Trump declared last Friday in Syracuse, New York, at a rally for Republican candidates.

“The Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a group of radical ideologues who are anti‑democracy and really enemies of civilization. We will not forget, Norway, that you didn’t give this prize,” he added.

Trump took to Truth Social to complain that the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to Navi Pillay, a South African human rights lawyer with a distinguished career as a former UN judge. He continued, “This is the woman who received the Nobel Peace Prize over the great United States of America, whose representative — ME — settled eight wars, and many other things. I know nothing about this woman, and neither does anyone else! In fact, to the best of my knowledge, no one ever heard of her other than the fact that she, very obviously, hates Israel.”

It is not Navi Pillay’s fault that President Trump ignores basic facts about her career. She earned her Doctor of Juridical Science at Harvard in 1988, and in 1995 was appointed to the High Court of South Africa. In 1999, she became a judge and later President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and was subsequently named to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

From 2008 to 2014 she served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and from 2021 to 2025 she chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In 2019, she became an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the genocide case against Myanmar. The Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized Navi Pillay’s role as a driving force in strengthening the international system of law and accountability.

Despite Pillay’s achievements, Trump declared with considerable chutzpah, “I don’t know what the woman has done. I settled eight wars, with letters being sent from every President and Prime Minister from the countries that I helped to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, and I’m about to settle, or win, two more — Iran and Russia/Ukraine. They are both happening at breakneck speed but, forget them, it’s the eight that I have already settled, any one of which, in particular Pakistan and India, would be far more than necessary to win the Nobel Prize. In actuality, I should have won eight Nobel Peace Prizes, not just one!”

He added, “Additionally, I stopped Iran from having a nuclear weapon, and blowing up the entire Middle East and, ultimately, far beyond! I saved more lives than anyone in history and, as Maria Corina Machado, a truly fine person, stated to the media when she gave me her Nobel Prize last year, ‘Donald Trump settled many wars, and deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than any person that has ever received it.’ Based on my record of peace — a record that no one else has ever achieved — I agree!”

It is entirely possible that Donald Trump will agree with himself. It is far less likely that millions of viewers agreed when they saw Maria Corina Machado’s somber expression as she handed him the prize, almost certainly under considerable pressure. These facts point to a world with its moral compass inverted — and to the urgent need for mental health professionals to take a more active role in analyzing the implications of such distortions.