President Donald Trump has reportedly been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and liberals are outraged.
A Norwegian lawmaker submitted the nomination based on Trump’s role in brokering a historic agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Fox News reported.
“For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of Norway’s Parliament, told Fox News.
In his letter to the Nobel Committee, Tybring-Gjedde, a social conservative and immigration hardliner, said the Trump administration-brokered normalization of Israel-UAE relations could lead to Middle East peace.
- The deal — announced last month and set to be signed at a White House ceremony next Tuesday — makes the UAE the third Araby country and first Gulf state to formally recognize Israel.
“As it is expected other Middle Eastern countries will follow in the footsteps of the UAE, this agreement could be a game-changer that will turn the Middle East into a region of cooperation and prosperity,” Tybring-Gjedde wrote.
The lawmaker also praised Trump’s diplomacy in other international conflicts — such as between India and Pakistan and North Korea and South Korea and the United States — and for withdrawing American troops from the Middle East.
“Indeed, Trump has broken a 39-year-old streak of American Presidents either starting a war or bringing the United States into an international armed conflict. The last president to avoid doing so was Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter,” Tybring-Gjedde wrote.
The reaction: Many conservatives welcomed the news, with some saying Trump’s selection by the Nobel Committee would correct what they saw as its recent missteps.
- Commentator Mark Levin suggested former President Barack Obama — who won the prize in 2009, less than a year into his presidency — hand over his award directly to Trump.
Some liberals, meanwhile, reacted to the development with shock and outrage.
Others, like The Scotsman columnist Marty McLaughlin, downplayed the significance of the nomination, which can be made of anyone by a national politician or other specified officials.
- At least 318 candidates have been nominated for the 2020 award.
One woman compared Trump’s selection to those of World War II-era fascist leaders.
A man of peace: Trump and his allies have long argued he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize and mocked the Nobel Committee for giving the honor to Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
Tybring-Gjedde and another Norwegian official previously nominated Trump for the prize in 2018 following the president’s Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also reportedly submitted a nomination around the same time at the request of the U.S. government.
