WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama won it.
So did Jimmy Carter, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
Now, President Donald Trump[1]’s supporters are pushing for him to be the next U.S. leader to win the Nobel Peace Prize - a move that’s being met by smirks and eye rolls in Europe, where Trump[2] remains deeply unpopular.
But that’s not stopping a growing list of champions from pushing the Nobel committee to consider Trump[3] for the world’s most coveted diplomatic prize.
“I’ve been talking about this for months,” said Indiana Rep. Luke Messer[4], touting the success of what he called Trump[5]’s “Twitter diplomacy.” He’s one of 18 Republican lawmakers who penned a letter to Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Berit Reiss-Andersen last week to “respectfully nominate President Donald J. Trump to receive the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his work to end the Korean War, denuclearize the Korean peninsula, and bring peace to the region.”
As is customary, lawmakers in the Nordic region where the Nobel is awarded refrain from commenting on possible nominees. But in Copenhagen[6], Denmark[7], there was little appetite for the prospect of a Trump[8] win.
“Trump[9] … the peace prize? You must be joking,” said Lene Larsen, a 46-year-old accountant before bursting out laughing. “Maybe it should be a sex prize or a prize for being unpopular.”
Hasse Jakupsen, 52, said the prospects of a win were dim.
“I am pretty sure the Norwegians can see through this. Being nominated does not mean that you actually get the prize. It is pretty ridiculous to have such hopes” of getting the prize....
The push comes as Trump[10] is preparing for an historic summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, which will serve as the highest-stakes diplomatic test to date for a president whose unconventional approach to foreign policy has also prompted fears of nuclear winter. Trump[11] scored a substantial win on Wednesday when he announced that three Americans who had been detained by Kim were on their way home to the U.S.It remains far from clear, however, whether the North will ultimately agree to give up its nuclear weapons and allow independent inspectors to verify their compliance.Polling has shown Trump[12] and many of the policies he’s championed to be broadly unpopular around the globe. The Pew Research Center has also found that the public’s trust in the U.S. president to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs has plummeted since Trump[13] took office. And Sweden saw the largest drop from former President Barack Obama, who won the Nobel in 2009 less than a year into his presidency, to Trump[14], with 93 percent confident in Obama and just 10 percent in Trump