(Getty Images)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
January 10th, 2020
New York (TADIAS) — Politics aside, Donald Trump — who last month became only the third president in American history to be impeached – seems to be continuing his endless rant against Obama, and this time it also looks like he may be mad at Ethiopia’s PM for robbing him of the chance to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize winning Columnist and Associate Editor of The Washington Post, had asked in a poignant article this week: “Seriously? Does Obama take up that much space inside Trump’s head?” Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Eugene then proceeded to remind us that:
the vehicle Trump used to transform himself from a harmless New York character into a malevolent political force was birtherism — the absurd, fictional and racist claim that the nation’s first African American president was not actually born in the United States. I have met Trump supporters who still believe in this thoroughly debunked fairy tale. Obama’s election and reelection made a powerful statement about the nation and its growing diversity. Trump, however, portrayed that statement as a threat. Whether he genuinely felt a sense of racial panic or just pretended to do so is irrelevant. That’s how he played it, and he rode Obama-hatred to the White House.
But even more bemusing is that Trump, who has long coveted in matching Obama with the prestigious Nobel Prize, whined that the 2019 award has gone to Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
“I’m going to tell you about the Nobel Peace Prize,” Trump told a rally in Toledo, Ohio last night. “I’ll tell you about that. I made a deal, I saved a country, and I just heard that the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country. I said, ‘what, did I have something do with it?’ Yeah, but you know, that’s the way it is. As long as we know, that’s all that matters.”
Well, we are more than certain that PM Abiy will be the first to credit the youth protesters across Ethiopia who’ve paid with their lives for political reform in the country not any foreign leader or nation. Still, we all appreciate America’s continued engagement with Ethiopia and its support to assist the people’s desire to build a more peaceful, inclusive and democratic society, and maintaining the more-than-a-century-old relationship that began in 1903, making Ethiopia the first diplomatic partner of the United States on the African continent.
In the end, Trump is not mad at Ethiopia. As Peter Weber of The Week Magazine noted he is simply envious of his predecessor: “The last U.S. president to win a Nobel Peace Prize was Barack Obama.”
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Related:
Puzzlement in Ethiopia as Trump claims hand in Nobel prize (The Associated Press)
Trump says he deserves Nobel Peace Prize not Abiy Ahmed (BBC)
TRUMP INSISTS HE WAS ROBBED OF NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AT OHIO RALLY (Vanity Fair)
Foreign Affairs Democrats: ‘Trump is confused’ on Ethiopian claim (The Hill)
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