Anchorage, Alaska – At the end of Donald Trump’s first mandate, his national security advisor turned to him in the Oval office and said he should win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work that normalizes relations between Israel and some Arab states.
Another assistant intervened, saying that the last president, Barack Obama, had won the “for nothing” award.
“Trump’s attitude was, whatever, ‘” recalled the advisor, Robert O’Brien, in an interview. “I wasn’t worried about recognition.”
Any smell of indifference is now gone. Back in office, Trump and his assistants are intensifying a public campaign to hook the prize, citing a series of peace agreements in making a case that venting it again would be an injustice.
Day by day, the White House is amplifying Trump’s role in curbing hostilities and publishing the message that this combative of the presidents is in the background a “peacemaker.”
Attendees have highlighted their role in the solution of disputes between Israel and Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Thailand, and Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, promoting “World Calls” of the heads of several of those nations so that Trump wins the Peace Prize.
Trump is also promoting his efforts to end a worrying conflict between two combatants with nuclear weapons, India and Pakistan. He suggested that he used trade as an incentive to stop fighting, although an Indian official has denied that Trump’s mediation made some difference.
Speaking last month, the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the president has “negotiated, on average, around a peace agreement or the high fire per month during his six months in office. The time that President Trump received the Nobel Peace Prize,” he added.
A difference between this term and the last is that now “he really wants it,” said a senior official in Trump’s first mandate about the Nobel Peace Prize, speaking under condition of anonymity. “Not just want to talk about that.”
Now his best shot comes. On Friday, Trump will fly to Alaska for a sitting with Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at ending a war with Ukraine that has produced about 1.5 million casualties on both sides.
The chances of great advance are difficult, but if Trump runs a truce in fair terms for Ukraine, that would be a diplomatic triumph that eluded both Obama and President Joe Biden.
In the period prior to the summit, the Nobel Prize seems to be the most important in Trump’s circle. Without requesting, Leavitt portrayed Trump as a prize deserving in three of his four press information sessions in July. In previous months, she had not mentioned the prize.
Trump has published about the award a total of seven times at his social media site since his second term began, six of them in June and July. An issue of his is that, while he won praise, he will not win it.
“The president feels that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but does not believe he will get it,” said a White House official, speaking under anonymity. “He commented that he will go to someone who writes a book about how Donald Trump thinks instead of Donald Trump himself.”
On a visit to the White House in April, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was asked about Trump’s perspectives to win the award, announced annually in Oslo.
He didn’t bit.
“In that award, that is a committee that is in charge of what is working completely in its own terms and I cannot comment on that,” Støre said.
Trump smiled and looked through the table in the cabinet room at the prime minister: “I like that question,” he said.
The prize is only in the hands of the Nobel Selection Committee; Politicians do not choose the winner. But according to the reports, Trump has raised the problem with Norway before. Last month, he called on the country’s finance minister, former NATO general secretary Jens Stoltenberg, to talk about tariffs and brought the peace award, wrote on Thursday a Norwegian media.
The White House official said that President and Stoltenberg spoke, but could not say that the conversation focused on the prize. The Stoltenberg office did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Trump is surrounded by reminders of previous presidents who have won what could be said that it is the most prestigious prize of humanity. Obama, whose portrait hangs at the White House, won him less than a year in his presidency and even recognized at that time that his achievements were “mild” in contrast to other laureate Nobel.
Only a few steps from the Oval office, Theodore Roosevelt’s Nobel Prize is on display, which means both the challenge and the opportunity Trump faces. Roosevelt won in 1906 for ending another Russian conflict: a war with Japan.
As much as they align politically with the Americans who work, Trump has been in tune with elite’s opinion. It is proud to tell that its late uncle, John Trump, taught at the acclaimed Massachusetts Technology Institute. He described his Alma Mater, the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania, as “the hardest school to enter, the best school in the world.”
By announcing the honorees of the Kennedy center on Wednesday, Trump said he had long wanted one for himself. The president now plans to organize the honors of the Kennedy center this year, causing journalists, “maybe … next year we will honor Trump.”
A Nobel Peace Prize would be the best validation.
“If the conflicts of Israel-Ahamas/Iran and Russia-Ukraine are resolved, there is no way that the Nobel Peace Prize,” O’Brien said to the President Trump, “O’Brien said.
“The Nobel Committee does not like Trump,” he added. “You may not like your personality. You may not like your populism, but if the prize has any meaning, they have to give it to him.”
Of course, the Nobel Selection Committee has its own ideas about what is needed to win. The body of five members designated by the Norwegian Parliament may be weighing other criteria apart from the peace agreements that the White House has counted.
In his will, Alfred Nobel declared that the prize should go to those “who will have done the greatest or best work for fraternity among nations.”
Since Trump assumed the position, some American allies of a lifetime have seen Fray of fraternal bonds. Trump has launched rigid tariffs in search of an “America First” agenda aimed at creating more jobs at home. He screwed several capitals of the world with his calls to acquire Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal.
“Trump’s desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize has become a kind of joke in foreign capitals,” said a former British diplomat. “His statements to Canada, Panama, Greenland, etc., as well as tariff wars and assaults on the democratic institutions of the United States, incline governments in the opposite direction.”
What happens in the deliberations of closed doors of the Nobel Committee is a closely guarded secret. The panel accepts nominations until the end of January and announces the winner in October. Wait 50 years before revealing even a list of nominees.
Possible disability winners of the 2025 Prize, a group of Norwegian experts did not mention Trump’s name. The handful of leaders cited by the group included “Sudan emergency response rooms”, Qatar’s prime minister, the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE, and the International League of Peace and Freedom of Women.
It is far from clear that the Nobel Committee is susceptible to persuasion. Pressure, advertising and work construction work in politics, the Trump Arena knows well. But the Nobel Committee is isolated from that world.
The “is not something you campaign,” said a western diplomat. “This is a decision made by people who are independent and have their own point of view. You can’t buy. Norway does not need money.”
Last week, Trump held a meeting at the White House with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to mark an approach between the two countries. Questioned by a journalist, both leaders gave Trump’s Nobel Nobel candidacy.
Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia, said: “We will promote for that.”
Returning to Trump, he said: “I wish he will invite us” to the awards ceremony.
“First row,” Trump said.
