History rhymed this week, although it was a rhyme of opposites. The big news is that Donald Trump achieved a ceasefire deal that frees the remaining hostages from Hamas. Israel gets everyone back, alive or dead. It gives us a historical reminder of what peace looks like and what it doesn't.

Trump's deal happened almost exactly two years to the day of the October 7, 2023, attacks. Trump announced his deal on October 8, 2025. The deal saw both Israelis and Gazans cheering, everyone hoping the conflict might be nearing an end.

Ironically enough, those same people cheering in the streets were also cheering for something else: Donald Trump to get the Nobel Peace Prize.

Now, I will state up front, I don't believe Donald Trump will get the Nobel Peace Prize. The man could cure cancer, deliver world peace, and tuck the Nobel committee to bed with a kiss on the head, and they wouldn't give him a prize. He's a Republican, and the elites hate his guts.

The bias is clear, and I won't dwell on that. But it is worth noting that the timing of Trump's deal is what makes it rhyme with the past. On October 9, 2009, Barack Obama learned he'd won the Nobel Peace Prize, just months into the first year of his first term.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." The move was controversial because no one could really provide one substantive reason for why he'd gotten the prize.

Obama himself joked about this in his acceptance speech, "I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. (Laughter.) In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who've received this prize -- Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela -- my accomplishments are slight."

He wasn't wrong. The irony is that once you get to the end of Obama's tenure, the Nobel Peace Prize looks more like a joke than it was when he received it. The evidence at the end outweighed the hope of his beginnings.

Obama got in bed with the Iranians, immensely empowering Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, which led directly to October 7, 2023.

The two wars continued under Obama, and he ended up massively expanding the U.S. drone strike program. Those programs ended up knocking off the leader of Libya and triggering a migrant crisis in Syria when Obama refused to draw a red line.

That migrant crisis was so bad that it triggered a massive crisis across Europe. Populism sprang forth under Obama and rejected his humanitarian disasters. You can draw a line from Obama's red line failure in Syria to Brexit in the U.K., and the continuing shaking across the European Union.

Barack Obama not only didn't bring peace, but his attitudes towards foreign policy were so bad that they eroded the entire post-WWII consensus. When Donald Trump came charging into power in 2016, he took over a world in crisis.

That's why it will forever be ironic that Obama gets the prize, and Trump likely won't. Trump's largest deal is the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and various Arab countries for the first time in Israel's modern existence.

Biden couldn't build on that and added the Ukraine war to America's ledger. In turn, in Trump's second term, we've seen serious strides made in bringing hostages home while the trifecta of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas got neutered.

The motto of peace through strength is echoing across the world, and the dividends we're getting are immediate. Getting all the hostages out eliminates the primary negotiating leverage of Hamas in this ordeal. The immense pressure Trump and the Israelis are putting on these terrorists is changing everything.

We've seen how Democrats handled these same situations. Biden and his Obama cabinet fellows left us a more dangerous and uncertain world. Trump is addressing those issues, and we're still in the first year of his second term.

What we're witnessing in the Middle East under Trump's leadership is nothing short of transformative. It's a new world where Israel is a leading power and at peace with its neighbors. And we're nearing a point where not only is Israel at peace, but they could start profiting off their neighbors.

I don't know how to define the parameters of the Nobel Peace Prize, but I can see what past political winners have done. Trump has the actual resume to take to the event. Few of his political predecessors did. Obama couldn't even defend his record.

We all know why Trump won't get it. But that proves the point, he should get it.