Norwegian far-right MP nominates Donald Trump for Nobel peace prize
A Norwegian far-right MP has nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize for a second time, citing his role in the normalising of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Christian Tybring-Gjedde told Fox News: “For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other peace prize nominees.”
Trump responded to news of his nomination for the 2021 prize by expressing his thanks on Twitter.
The bar for being nominated for the prize is low, as nominations are accepted from any politician serving at a national level, or from heads of state. For the 2020 prize, the winner of which has yet to be announced, there were 318 candidates.
Tybring-Gjedde said in his nomination letter: “As it is expected other Middle Eastern countries will follow in the footsteps of the UAE, this agreement could be a gamechanger that will turn the Middle East into a region of cooperation and prosperity.”
As yet there has been no sign of this happening, with a recent visit by the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to the region yielding no further developments.
Tybring-Gjedde was one of two
Norwegian politicians who nominated Trump for the peace prize in 2018 for his efforts to bring reconciliation between North and South Korea. The Norwegian Nobel committee does not publicly comment on nominees. Under its rules, the information is required to be kept secret for 50 years.
A group of Republicans from the House of Representatives also sent an open letter to the committee in 2018 urging them to award the prize to Trump the following year.
A previous attempt to nominate Trump ended in mystery when two nominations submitted for him in 2017 turned out to have been faked. They were subsequently withdrawn by the committee, leading Norwegian police to contact the FBI to try to trace the culprits.
The Nobel peace prize was awarded to Barack Obama in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people”. He donated the $1.4m award to charity. In 2013 Trump called for Obama’s award to be rescinded.
Other previous US administration recipients of the prize have included Woodrow Wilson in 1920, for his efforts in ending the first world war and part in creating the League of Nations. Jimmy Carter received the award in 2002, and the former vice-president Al Gore was honoured in 2007, for his efforts to spread knowledge about climate change.