The prize and the praise - Obama did not merit the Nobel Prize and Mamdani did not merit praise from Trump
November 29, 2025
By: Joseph Puder
Barack Hussein Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize despite a record of non-achievements. Obama was nominated just days into the start of his presidency in 2009, and, in the intervening years, there were no substantive accomplishments pertaining to peacemaking beyond the eloquent rhetoric that marked his campaign and the eight years of his presidency. The Nobel committee, whose membership were Scandinavians with a white guilt complex, decided that the Peace Prize should go to Obama because he was a non-white person who spoke of lofty ideals.
Similarly, President Donald J. Trump praised Zohran Kwame Mamdani, the Democratic-Socialist mayor-elect of New York City, who has made persuasive statements about “affordability” regarding housing, food, and transportation, without presenting a plan for how he intends to make it happen. The Hill’s 11/21/2025 headline read, “Trump offers praise for ‘rational’ Mamdani in remarkable White House meeting.” Trump added, “I think you’re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor.”
Like Obama’s lackluster term in office, Mamdani has done nothing to merit the president’s praise. His tenure as a member of the New York State Assembly since 2021, the only political position he has ever held, was absent any significant achievements.
New York City has never had a Muslim mayor. Mamdani embraces the red and green ideologies of the radical left, which is anti-capitalist and pro-Islamism. Ironically, it was Trump who called Mamdani a “communist” and, in his first term, denied U.S. entry to those Muslims applying from terror-supporting Muslim states.
Mamdani openly supports the Hamas terror group, which the U.S. government has listed as a terrorist organization. He co-founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at his alma mater, Bowdoin College. SJP is a rabidly anti-Israel and antisemitic movement responsible for organizing the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish riots that have been taking place on American campuses since October 7. Columbia University was the site of student encampments where Jewish students were harassed and intimidated as they attempted to walk to class. Coincidentally, it is where Mamdani’s father, Mahmood, teaches, participated in pro-Hamas demonstrations, and called Israelis Nazis while calling for the dismantlement of the State of Israel. Zohran supports the BDS campaign against Israel and accuses Israel of committing genocide and being an apartheid state while calling for a “global Intifada.”
Mamdani, a relative unknown up until his decision to run for mayor, lives in a rent-controlled apartment and entered the campaign season with more than $20 million. Of note is the connection his mother, Mira Nair, a filmmaker, has with Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamed Al-Thani, sister of the ruling emir of Qatar, who has supported Nair with millions of dollars. According to the Middle East Forum, some of his support came from controversial extremist organizations including ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America), a Muslim nonprofit that terror experts identify as the North American branch of Jamaat-e-Islami, a violent South Asian Islamist group.
Although President Donald Trump, a native New Yorker, wants the best for NYC, his praise of Mamdani, who has failed to denounce the Gaza terror group and pledged to arrest Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, came off as legitimization. Moreover, a day after his “friendly” engagement with President Trump, Mamdani was quoted by NBC News as saying that he still believes that President Donald Trump is a “fascist” and a “despot.”
Unlike Obama, Trump does deserve the Nobel Prize for Peace. The Abraham Accords are a significant Middle Eastern agreement between Israel and four Arab-Muslim states (Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates; Sudan did not ratify the accords, as it is in the midst of a civil war). In recent days, Trump has met with Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia in the hopes of having him join the Abraham Accords. He has been in discussion with Indonesia as well.
There is a point of convergence regarding Obama, Trump, and Mamdani: Muslim immigration into the U.S. According to the Daily Wire, President Obama made it abundantly clear that one of his primary goals for his presidency was to force the United States to be more diverse, less racist, less “xenophobic,” and particularly less “Islamophobic.” By the end of his presidency the Daily Wire was projecting that he would have issued more than 1 million green cards to Muslim migrants. This projection was based on a report done by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and National Interest, which analyzed publicly released data from the Department of Homeland Security. The study found that from the time Obama first came into power until the end of FY2014, he issued a total of 832,014 green cards to migrants from Muslim countries, most of whom came from war-torn and terror-plagued regions, including Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Somalia.
As previously noted, during his first term, Trump ended Obama’s flooding of America with Middle Eastern Muslims. However, President Biden continued where Obama left off. Mamdani was able to capitalize on the influx of Muslims into the city. According to Google, as of 2025, New York City is home to an estimated 900,000 to 1 million Muslims, which represents more than 10% of the city’s population. Of those who voted, most if not all of them voted for Mamdani. There are lingering questions as to whether some of those who voted were legally eligible and if voting regulations were duly enforced.
The other point of convergence is the Emirate of Qatar. President Obama maintained a strong strategic partnership with Qatar, centered on security, economic, and diplomatic cooperation. Qatar invested billions in U.S. major companies, American universities, and other educational institutions and paid enormous sums to build up its image as well as buying off politicians. President Trump recently signed an exchange agreement deal with the Qataris worth $1.2 trillion. The Qataris also gave the U.S. a gift of a Boeing 747-8 luxury jetliner, which the Trump administration accepted.
The operative question is whether Trump’s praise of Mamdani is to please the Qataris. The litmus test will be if the Trump administration designates the entire Muslim Brotherhood — whose primary funder and promoter is Qatar — as a terrorist organization.
The Nobel Peace Prize was wrongly given to Obama. Is Trump trying to appease the Muslim world and Mamdani in order to get that prize?