US ‘asked Japan to put Trump up for a Nobel’
JAPAN’S prime minister nominated US president Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize at the request of Washington officials, it has been reported.
Shinzo Abe was sounded out ‘informally’ by the US government after Mr Trump’s landmark summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last June, an unnamed Japanese govern- ment source told newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
Mr Trump said on Friday that Mr Abe nominated him for the esteemed award last autumn for his efforts to defuse tensions with Pyongyang.
The US leader went on: ‘I said, “Thank you”. Many other people feel that way, too.’
Japanese officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, his first year in office, for laying out the US commitment to ‘seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons’. Mr Trump complained on Friday that Mr Obama was there ‘for about 15 seconds’ before he got the prize, adding: ‘They gave it to Obama, he didn’t even know what he got it for.’