Donald Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize following Israel-UAE deal

Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who nominated US President Donald Trump, told Fox News that he is nevertheless "not a big Trump supporter."

SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 16:30

US President Donald Trump (photo credit: REUTERS) — US President Donald Trump

(photo credit: REUTERS)

US President Donald Trump was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in reaching the agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Fox News reported on Wednesday morning.

Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of the Norwegian parliament and head of the Norwegian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, submitted the nomination.

Tybring-Gjedde had previously submitted a nomination for Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his Singapore summit, which hosted Kim Jong Un.

“For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” Tybring-Gjedde told Fox News.

“It is for his contribution for peace between Israel and the UAE,” Tybring-Gjedde, a member of parliament for the right-wing Progress Party, told Reuters. “It is a unique deal.”

In addition to the Israel-UAE deal, the nomination letter to the Nobel Committee cited Trump’s “key role in facilitating contact between conflicting parties... such as the Kashmir border dispute between India and Pakistan, and the conflict between North and South Korea.”

The parliamentarian told Fox News that he is nevertheless “not a big Trump supporter.”

“The committee should look at the facts and judge him on the facts – not on the way he behaves sometimes,” he continued. “The people who have received the Peace Prize in recent years have done much less than Donald Trump.

“For example, Barack Obama did nothing,” he told the cable news outlet, referring to the former US president’s Nobel Peace Prize win in 2009 for, according to the Nobel Committee, his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Thank you! https://t.co/S2kgsPh77l
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2020

Last year, Trump said he deserved to be awarded the Peace Prize for his work on North Korea and Syria, but he complained he probably would never get the honor.

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of six Nobel Prize categories, alongside physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and economics. The winner is selected by a panel of five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is appointed by the parliament of Norway.

The prize is awarded on December 10 every year, and the winner is announced on October 9. Thousands of people are eligible to nominate candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize, including members of parliaments and governments, university professors and past laureates.

The Norwegian Nobel Institute told The Jerusalem Post that there is no way of confirming the nomination “due to the 50 years confidentiality clause. Neither the names of nominators nor of nominees may be divulged until 50 years have elapsed.”
Reuters contributed to this report.