Give the Nobel to Jared

On a season eight episode of The Simpsons, newscaster Kent Brockman interviews a man who’s woken up from a 23-year-long coma, and lets him know that Sonny Bono is now a Congressman and Cher has won an Oscar. The man dies soon after. If someone were to wake up from a coma today to find out that Donald Trump, who 23 years ago was hosting The Apprentice, is now the leading candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, it would have a similar result. 

But who else deserves the award? If you can give Peace Prizes to Al Gore and Barack Obama for basically being Cool Liberal Guys Who Aren’t Dick Cheney, you can give one to Donald Trump. Look at who’s nominated him: Benjamin Netanyahu, the government of Pakistan, The Israeli Hostages Family Forum. It’s not exactly Rudy Giuliani, Kayleigh McEnany and an anonymous account from Barron’s burner phone. The “President of peace” does seem a little too eager to get his hands on the medal. “I should have gotten it four or five times,” he said in June. 

But, again, who else should get it at this moment in history? Jimmy Carter deserved one in 1978 for brokering the Camp David Accords. What Trump’s done is equally significant. The list of other deserving candidates is pretty small: They could always give it to Pope Leo, who seems like a nice Pope, or to Chef José Andres, who’s fed millions of refugees in need. If the Nobel Committee hands it to Greta Thunberg, it might actually cause World War III.

The only logical answer is Trump’s son-in-law, and the man who’s quietly done all the actual work on negotiating the Israel-Hamas peace accords: Jared Kushner. We’ve heard Kushner’s name in the Peace Prize conversation before. In 2022, Congressman Lee Zeldin nominated him for his role in brokering the Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE, and the year before, Alan Dershowitz nominated him for the same reason. Then-CNN political writer Chris Cilizza, who’s never been nominated for anything other than “Weenus of the Year,” said that these nominations were “less of a big deal than you think.” But they were actually a pretty big deal. 

In 2022, Jared Kushner was not anywhere near the seat of power. The Washingtonian wrote an article about him called “Javanka In Exile,” as he and Ivanka Trump tried to navigate their way in what a prematurely triumphant media considered to be a post-Trump Washington. And what was Jared Kushner doing in “exile”? Getting Nobel Peace Prize nominations while quietly going about his billionaire business trying to achieve an impossible 3,000-year-old dream of bringing peace to the Middle East. 

Hamas’s horrifying October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel and Israel’s response in Gaza were the opposite of peace in the Middle East. If anything, it created a situation where regional war could explode into world conflict, with calls to “globalize the intifada.” The war between Islamic militants and defenders of Israel spilled off computer screens and into the streets of the world, sometimes violently. Once the Trump Restoration occurred, Trump sent Kushner back into the fray. In his calm, patient, non-spotlight-seeking way, Kushner has once again sought to bring peace where, as long as any of us have lived, there’s been war. 

Of course Trump is taking credit. That’s what he does. “All I can do is put out wars,” he said at the United Nations recently. “I don’t seek attention. I just want to save lives.” Trump always seeks attention, and it might be hard to sell him to the Nobel Peace committee on a week where he threatens to arrest the Mayor of Chicago, orders the National Guard to Portland and brags about blowing Venezuelan drug boats out of the water. Even if he goes to Egypt this weekend and parts the Red Sea, it still might not be enough. But peace in our time, despite all that, is still within reach. 

The late Tom Lehrer once said “political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.” And it’s true, they gave the prize for ending the Vietnam War to the architect of the firebombing of Cambodia. Political satire is now either obsolete, or maybe we all just live in it daily. Donald Trump didn’t start the fire in the Middle East, but he’s certainly doing all he can to end the conflict, or at least Jared Kushner is. Give Jared the Nobel Prize. Javanka is no longer in exile.