The Chronicle

WHERE IS TRUMP’S NOBEL PRIZE?

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SO where’s the Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump? Barack Obama got one for nothing, so surely Trump deserves one for taming North Korea’s dictatorsh­ip.

I’m kidding, of course. There’s no way the Nobel committee would give this US president what he deserves.

Yes, it gave its Peace Prize to an unrepentan­t Palestinia­n terrorist like Yasser Arafat in 1994 for signing a dud peace deal with Israel that he then ignored.

But to a man of the Right like Trump? A man who bullied the North Korean dictator to the peace table? Oh, no, the media Left would never forgive it.

How they frothed when Trump threatened to bomb North Korea if it didn’t stop testing nuclear weapons, and mocked dictator Kim Jong-un as “little rocket man”.

The Sydney Morning Herald warned against this “most dangerous game”.

The Chicago Tribune fretted: “Will Trump start a nuclear war with North Korea?”

And the foreign policy establishm­ent that for decades had failed to stop North Korea’s nuclear program or make it formally end its war with South Korea tut-tutted at his tactics.

The New York Times scolded: “The President’s tone also generated a mix of scorn and alarm among lawmakers, diplomats and national security experts who called it juvenile and frightenin­g.”

As it turns out, Trump knew better than most how to talk the language a dictator like Kim would both hear and understand.

Last week, Kim met South Korea’s president to talk peace, with South Korean foreign affairs minister Kang Kyung-wha praising Trump.

“Clearly, credit goes to President Trump,” she said. “He’s been determined to come to grips with this from day one.”

Kim has also met Trump’s incoming Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, before mooted talks with Trump himself about ridding the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.

These are hugely significan­t steps. True, they may yet lead to nothing, but that’s never stopped the Nobel committee from awarding its prize before. Obama won his after being nominated just 11 days into his presidency, merely for talking peace.

The Nobel committee, led by a former Labour prime minister of Norway, gave him the prize just to encourage him, even though he went on to devastate Libya with a bombing war and give Islamic State a big start by pulling US troops out of Iraq too early.

So where is Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize?

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