Parse through this slowly, constant reader, because you are going to have to attempt to replicate the musings of a madman and try to make some kind of sense of how he sees things. That will not be an easy task for you, we’re telling you that right now. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists today. Then Donald Trump decided that there should be a fourth honoree (?) and that it should be him, of course. So he cobbled together a quote by the Secretary of Energy as his rationale for deserving the award and boy is that a cup of weak tea. And then it goes straight downhill from there.
Your first question is going to be, “Did Chris Wright say that and if so, when?” Good question. It’s thought that, “Trump was likely referring to John Clarke, an 83-year-old British scientist formerly with the Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab and an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics alongside Frenchman Michel Devoret, 72, with Yale University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as American John Martinis, 67, also with UCSB,” according to the Daily Beast.
The post came just a day after the president credited himself with ending a made-up war against the climate change “hoax,” in an apparent bid to keep the flame burning on his long-shot attempt to win a Nobel Peace Prize, which he failed to secure despite aggressive lobbying.
“The President of the United States is so upset about his failed campaign for a Nobel Prize that he’s now trying to claim someone else’s prize as his own. Pathetic,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X. The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
It was unclear when Wright made the remark quoted by Trump. When reached for clarification, the White House pointed the Daily Beast to X posts by the Energy Department congratulating this year’s Nobel Prize awardees.
Energy Undersecretary Darío Gil earlier celebrated the award as “well-deserved recognition of this groundbreaking research funded by the Office of Science.”
“The laureates’ outstanding impact on quantum research will continue to shape the field through DOE’s National Quantum Information Sciences Research Centers. We are so proud to support this amazing research,” he said in a statement.
As usual, the White House sanewashing goes into effect. But sanewash this: Dr. Clarke had earlier chastised Trump’s sweeping layoffs in the scientific arena and warned about their effect.
Clarke earlier expressed alarm at the Trump administration’s mass firings of government scientists and sweeping funding cuts to science and medicine research programs, describing them as “an immensely serious problem” that’s “entirely beyond any understanding of anyone who is a scientist.”
“This will cripple much of United States science research,” he told AFP. “It is going to be disastrous if this continues. Assuming that the present administration finally comes to an end, it may take a decade to get back to where we were, say, half a year ago.”
It would be a great thing indeed if this present administration finally comes to an end. The fact that one of the world’s best scientific minds has to couch his ideas in such language is beyond sobering. Meanwhile, the search goes on for when the Secretary of Energy made the comment Trump attributes to him (assuming that he did) and I daresay that these three physicists are awestruck that Trump believes that he is one of them and should share in the award that it took their lives’ work to achieve.
Everything Trump Touches Dies. So far he’s been kept from denigrating the honor of the Nobel Prize but it’s not for lack of trying. Let’s see what his next shot at somebody else’s Nobel will be because I firmly believe that there will be a next shot. Once Trump fixates on something, he can’t get off of it. So will Literature be his next target? That could be interesting. Trump has called himself, “The Hemingway of Twitter,” maybe he thinks he’s Hemingway across the boards.
