Death’s Apprentice
Trump’s Body Count Will Be His Legacy
Donald Trump was asked if he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. “Everyone thinks so,” he told reporters, “but I would never say it.” That was in 2018, prior to a failed summit with North Korea dictator Kim Jong-un.
But he does say it. Last month, he called the Norwegian Foreign Minister – the Nobel Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee – and asked about it. "Out of the blue, while Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg was walking down the street in Oslo, Donald Trump called," reported Reuters, citing Norwegian business daily Dagens Naeringsliv. "He wanted the Nobel Prize - and to discuss tariffs."
“When he met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders at the White House on 18 August, he claimed: ‘I've ended six wars,’" reported Sky News, “telling reporters the following day he had, in fact, resolved seven.” Sky News analyzed all seven and found that, while Trump deserves credit for helping resolve a recent dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, he had little influence over the others.
Donald Trump will not receive a Nobel Peace Prize. His legacy is death, not peace.
Death In War
When Trump claimed to have ended six – or seven – regional conflicts, he omitted the most deadly and consequential: Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine.
“Tragedy has piled on tragedy in Gaza,” editorialized The Guardian, “Yet Israel’s attack on Nasser hospital – the only functioning public hospital left in the south – still stood out. One strike was followed within minutes by another, hitting those who had raced to help the wounded.” The casualties included “civilians, rescue workers and journalists.”
Noting Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff, and all civilians,” The Guardian asked, “Why, then, have more journalists died in Gaza in the last two years than globally in the previous three?” “Why,” it continued, “judging from the Israeli military’s own data, do civilians account for an astonishing 83% of the dead?”
“A group of some 600 retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, have written to US President Donald Trump to pressure Israel to immediately end the war in Gaza,” reports the BBC. “In the face of a Gaza crisis that is worsening and not nearing resolution, US President Donald Trump’s passivity is baffling,” writes Daniel B. Shapiro for the Atlantic Council.
“The US president has previously promised an end to the war with his trademark bombast,” noted Al Jazeera, “but his statements have not materialised into a ceasefire or even the free flow of humanitarian aid to a Palestinian population suffering under a punishing Israeli blockade.”
As for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Trump seems unable to perform the one task most likely to end it: putting pressure on Vladimir Putin. “He can accept Putin’s repeated insults and invite more,” writes Frederick Kempe for the Atlantic Council, “or he can answer with the one thing the Russian leader understands: maximum pressure.” Kempe suggested several concrete steps Trump could take. Unfortunately, Trump is a Putin fanboy who brings a man-crush to a gunfight.
Death Overseas
Approximately 334,000 people live in Orlando, Florida. That’s about how many people had been killed by the end of June by Trump’s termination of financial aid overseas, based on an estimate by Dr. Brooke Nichols of Boston University. If the cuts are not reversed, the total could reach 14,000,000 by 2030. That’s nearly double the number killed in World War One.
Trump’s elimination of funding for PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) has been particularly devastating. According to the PEPFAR Impact Counter, the loss of funding is estimated to kill an adult every 3.3 minutes and a child every half hour. The combined mortality exceeded 107,000 as of this writing.
Death In America
Putting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in charge of Health and Human Services is like putting a termite in charge of the woodpile. “During his February 2025 confirmation hearings,” notes the Center for American Progress, “Kennedy made a series of promises to Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA), pledging to ‘work within the current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems, and not establish parallel systems’ and to ‘maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.’”
“In just his first few months as secretary,” added the Center, “Kennedy has already broken these promises, endangering America’s vaccine system’s credibility and leaving families and communities exposed to imminent health threats in the process.”
“The U.S. is having its worst year for measles spread in more than three decades,” reports NPR, “with a total of 1,288 cases nationally and another six months to go in 2025.” Recent data show the number of flu cases – and pediatric deaths – have risen substantially.
Far more dangerous is Kennedy’s decision to terminate funding for mRNA research, a medical break-through that produced Covid vaccines and shows promise for treating cancer and HIV.
“I have been in this business for over 50 years on the front lines of public health,” Dr. Michael Osterholm recently told PBS. “I have served seven different presidential administrations advising them, and I have been through several pandemics. And I can say unequivocally that this was the most dangerous public health decision I have ever seen made by a government body.” Asked about long-term risks, Osterholm replied, “Well, they're incalculable, just because of the fact we're talking about potentially not just a few deaths. We're talking about many, many, many deaths that would occur.”
Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize is a fantasy that will never adorn his legacy. He will be remembered instead for the body count.