Give the peace prize to John Miller Barron
You know how Trump has a long history of using fake names to promote himself and his scams?
TheWashington Post set off a controversy last week when it published a story alleging that Trump posed as a public relations man named John Miller to energize the tabloid scandal raging over his affair with the model/actress Marla Maples and his divorce from his first wife Ivana. Trump last week denied that he’d made the call. The report provoked a new round of questions about Trump’s character. What could possibly motivate a grown man running a business empire to do such a thing? And what does this say about Trump’s temperament?
In fact, Trump’s use of fake names is far more extensive than most people realize. For more than a decade – 1980 to 1991 — Trump used phony names to promote himself. I know from my work as Trump’s biographer that even prior to the John Miller episode, Trump had posed as John Baron (or Barron).
And then named his kid that. Nothing creepy there, oh hell no.
Anyway. Now the Times reports that someone nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, and that someone is…a forgery. Twice.
A total of 329 candidates — 217 individuals and 112 organizations — are being considered for this year’s prize, which will be announced in October. The identities of the candidates are kept secret, and indeed, the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prizes, is forbidden
from divulgingto divulge any information about its deliberations for 50 years, and even then, only for scholarship purposes and at its discretion.But a wrinkle in this time-honored process — the peace prize was first awarded in 1901 — emerged on Tuesday, when the committee announced that it had uncovered what appeared to be a forged nomination of President Trump for the prize. The matter has been referred to the Oslo police for investigation.
Moreover, the forgery appears to have occurred twice: Olav Njolstad, the secretary of the five-member committee, said it appeared that a forged nomination of Mr. Trump for the prize was also submitted last year — and was also referred to the police. (The earlier forgery was not disclosed to the public at the time.)
It was probably…um…Hillary Clinton. Yeah, that’s it! She did it to get him in trouble. Or Obama did it. Or the two of them did it, and Oprah gave them a car afterwards.
Inspector Rune Skjold, the head of the economic crimes section of the Oslo police, said that investigators had been in touch with the F.B.I. since last fall, which suggests that the forged nominations originated in the United States. He said the police believed that the same perpetrator was behind both forgeries.
Who but who could it possibly be?
Not the guy who put a fake cover of TIME starring himself on the wall of one of his golf clubs. He would never do a thing like that.
The funny thing is, it wouldn’t be terribly hard for Trump to get a “legitimate” nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
You can be nominated by, among others, any member of a national legislative assembly (hi there, Devin Nunes!), or any university professor of history, social science, law, philosophy, theology, or religion. I’m sure there’s some Trump devotee out there who fits those criteria.
Why is why nobody should put much stock in the fact that someone has been “nominated.” If I recall correctly the Pulitzer Prizes work similarly — it’s incredibly easy to be “nominated” for a Pulitzer (literally anyone can submit a nomination), though there is a winnowed-down list of “finalists” which does reflect some merit.