The Nobel is just the start: 16 imagined victories for Donald Trump | Ariel Dorfman

From the start of his first campaign for president 10 years ago, Donald Trump has incessantly presented himself as a winner, the only man in the world who had the temperament to make America great again. As he said in 2016:

“We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say: ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it any more, Mr President, it’s too much.’ And I’ll say: ‘No it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!’”

We have to win more!

Those words keep haunting me all these years later. Trump, now enjoying his second conquest of the White House, cannot imagine the possibility that he could ever lose.

What comes next, then, for a man who wants a Nobel peace prize and can delude himself into believing that he is winning the trade war he has recently launched?

Here are 16 possible future wins for Trump as he relishes the prospect of Guinness World Records soon bringing out a special edition devoted exclusively to the American president’s innumerable victories and laurels.

1

Columbia University has announced that Donald J Trump will be its next commencement speaker, receiving a doctor of business administration degree, honoris causa. The board of trustees has affirmed that there is absolutely no relationship between these distinctions and its previous concessions to the US government after its threats to withdraw $400m in federal funding from the university. It will continue, a press release stated, to award honors as befits an institution that, like Harvard, is renowned for its independence from all political pressure.

2

The Nobel peace prize for 2025 has been awarded to Donald J Trump for his efforts to abolish war in our time and his unflagging support for the rights of women and immigrants worldwide. The decision by the Norwegian Nobel committee was accompanied by a plea for an end to Oslo’s coincidental occupation by peace-keeping contingents from the US fleet forces command.

3

Columbia University’s Pulitzer committee has awarded Donald J Trump a Pulitzer prize in public service for having unleashed the potential of American greatness.

4

The Society of American Magicians has named Donald J Trump as its escape artist of the year, thanks to his Houdini-like ability to avoid any consequence whatsoever for his multiple encounters with the law.

5

The Kennedy Center has announced that all five of its 2025 honors in the performing arts will go to Donald J Trump for his past and ongoing contributions to American culture and fine arts. In other news from the capital, the Smithsonian Institution has named the newest building being planned for the Mall as the Donald J Trump White European Heritage Museum.

6

Columbia University has added another honorary degree to be bestowed on Donald J Trump before his commencement speech: a doctor of humane letters, citing his campaign against false ideologies in our educational establishments.

7

In a speech by the president during the bestowal of the Nasa distinguished service medal, he thanked the independent agency for renaming the Sombrero galaxy as the Donald J Trump galaxy, a signal, he declared, to alien invaders that they are not welcome in our beautiful homeland.

8

The Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to Donald J Trump for his ability to meld fiction and non-fiction in hitherto uncharted ways, exercising an immense influence on writers and readers across the planet for generations to come. The Swedish Nobel committee cited the president’s books Save America and Kick Ass and Think Big as outstanding examples of his inimitable style. It also hoped that by the time the American laureate receives this honor from King Carl XVI Gustaf, the US Marines currently camped in Stockholm might be withdrawn from the city. To hasten such an evacuation, further measures may be taken by the committee.

9

The Lee C Bollinger Forum at Columbia University has been selected as the auditorium where the Arnold J Palmer lifetime service award for sportsmanship while playing golf will be presented to Donald J Trump. The Forum also expects to be the site where Donald J Trump will collect the Nobel prize in economics, the first to be conferred since the Swedish Academy assigned the decision about that award to the board of trustees of the newly created Elon Musk Delete Institute at Columbia University.

10

Donald J Trump was the 2025 recipient of an unprecedented four Emmy awards in the categories of acting, directing, editing and screen-writing, with a special emphasis on his enduring contributions to innovative forms of reality TV. The president was unable to attend the ceremony in New York as he had flown to San Diego, California, to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Bram Stoker Horror Writers Association for the way in which his entire body of work has substantially influenced terror and dread.

11

During his investiture as the new chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Donald J Trump called on Iran to follow the example of Israel and elect him as supreme ayatollah, a way to guarantee, he declared, peace between these two nations. The rabbinical service took place at the site where the Trump Gaza Riviera hotel is being built.

12

The NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB have collectively voted Donald J Trump as the comeback coach of the year for leading Team America to victory against overwhelming odds. The ceremony will take place at the Lerner Roone Arledge Auditorium at Columbia University.

13

The General Augusto Pinochet Foundation will host Donald J Trump, Vladimir Putin, Marine Le Pen and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a mass rally at the National Stadium in Santiago de Chile to celebrate them as defenders of democracy.

14

The Oxford Union has announced that Donald J Trump will debate himself in an upcoming session devoted to the question: “Is Donald J Trump the greatest American president of all time?” The unique decision to invite Mr Trump to argue twice in favor of the proposal as to his greatness was only reached after a judicious consideration of his outstanding rhetorical skills, which constantly keep his audience in suspense regarding what he will say or do next.

15

Columbia University’s Pulitzer committee has awarded Donald J Trump two retroactive Pulitzers in non-fiction and biography for The Art of the Deal, with apologies for having overlooked this seminal work when it was published.

16

The conclave of cardinals has chosen Donald J Trump as the new pope, citing his deep respect for the unborn and his wise stewardship of the environment and compassion for the poor. In a press release, the Vatican expressed the hope that the F-117 stealth fighters that have been deploying tactical nuclear weapons while hovering over Rome during this week might be ordered by the Air Force Strike Command back to their base in Aviano once the new pontiff is installed. The president is expected to easily pass the testicle test that every Holy Father must undergo, given that lots of people say that he has balls the likes of which have never been seen before.

• Ariel Dorfman, a distinguished professor emeritus of literature at Duke University, is the Chilean American author of the play Death and the Maiden and the novel The Suicide Museum and, more recently, Allegro, narrated playfully by Mozart