Trump Complains Iowa Storms Overshadowed His Nobel Nominations

At a campaign rally in Des Moines, President Donald Trump lamented the lack of attention he received for Nobel Peace Prize nominations, seemingly frustrated that coverage of devastating storms in Iowa received more media coverage.

“I turn on the television, they talked about your floods in Iowa,” Trump said Wednesday night at Des Moines International Airport. “They talked about, how’s Iowa doing with the crops? How is this happening? How are they doing in Florida? How are they — three, four stories, one after another.

“Where is my Nobel Peace Prize? They don’t talk about it,” the president continued. “I said, you know darling (First Lady Melania Trump), this news is a little tough. It’s a little tough to crack. When Obama got his Nobel Prize, it was so early. He didn’t even do anything. He still doesn’t know what he got it for. They said, why did you get it? He said, I have no idea, and it was the biggest story.”

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As is characteristic of a Trump rally, the Nobel Prize rant was hard to follow and segued into praise for Gov. Kim Reynolds’ husband, Kevin, and the hunting trip he went on with Donald Trump Jr.

Trump’s first Nobel Prize nomination came in June 2018 when two Norwegian lawmakers praised an agreement Trump signed with dictator Kim Jung Un in an effort to denuclearize North Korea. Last month, he was nominated twice by Norwegians and a group of Australians for a deal struck between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Though President Trump was nominated multiple times for the award, he has not won a Nobel Prize as President Obama did in 2009.

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Trump did not mention which nomination he felt was interrupted by news of severe weather in Iowa, making it difficult to know the “floods” he referred to.

Early in August, a derecho swept across Central and Eastern Iowa with winds reaching 140 mph in Cedar Rapids. The storm resulted in severe property and crop damage, but no flooding. In 2019, communities in Western Iowa, along the Missouri River, experienced record floods beginning in March. And in Eastern Iowa that spring, Davenport’s downtown was underwater. In 2018, Des Moines and its metro area suffered unprecedented flash flooding due to heavy rain.

Trump also mentioned a federal disaster declaration he “quickly issued,” seemingly referring to the declaration Iowa received in August a week after the derecho hit, but he continued discussing flooding.

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“When you had floods all over the place, you were like a large-scale swimming pool. I hate to say it, Iowa. I looked at the pictures that your governor sent. I said, ‘Kim, I never knew that this was oceanfront property.’ And we took care of you, right? We gave you everything you needed and we got rid of the — we’ve rebuilt the dams and dikes, right?”

By Elizabeth Meyer
Posted 10/15/20

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