ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Toward the end of Donald Trump’s first term, his national security adviser turned to him in the Oval Office and said he should win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work normalizing relations between Israel and some Arab states.
Another aide chimed in, saying the last president, Barack Obama, had won the award “for nothing.”
“Trump’s attitude was, ‘Whatever,’” recalled the adviser, Robert O’Brien, in an interview. “He wasn’t concerned about the recognition.”
Any whiff of indifference is now gone. Back in office, Trump and his aides are intensifying a public campaign to snag the award, citing a string of peace deals while making a case that snubbing him again would be an injustice.
Day by day, the White House is amplifying Trump’s role in curbing hostilities and putting out the message that this most combative of presidents is at heart a “peacemaker.”
Aides have highlighted his role in settling disputes between Israel and Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Thailand, and Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, promoting “worldwide calls” from the heads of several of those nations for Trump to win the peace prize.
Trump is also touting his efforts to end a worrying conflict between two nuclear-armed combatants, India and Pakistan. He suggested he used trade as an inducement to stop the fighting, though an Indian official has denied that Trump’s mediation made any difference.
Speaking last month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president has “brokered, on average, about one peace deal or ceasefire per month during his six months in office. It’s well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” she added.
A difference between this term and the last is that now, “he actually wants it,” a senior official in Trump’s first term said about the Nobel Peace Prize, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He doesn’t just want to talk about it.”
Now comes his best shot. On Friday, Trump will fly to Alaska for a sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at ending a war with Ukraine that has produced close to 1.5 million casualties on both sides.
The odds of a breakthrough are tough, but if Trump brokers a truce on terms that are fair to Ukraine, that would be a diplomatic triumph that eluded both Obama and President Joe Biden.
In the run-up to the summit, the Nobel prize has appeared to be top of mind in Trump’s circle. Without prompting, Leavitt portrayed Trump as deserving of the prize in three out of her four press briefings in July. In prior months, she hadn’t brought up the award.
Trump has posted about the prize a total of seven times on his social media site since his second term began, six of them in June and July. A theme of his is that while he’s earned the accolade, he won’t win it.
“The president feels that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but does not think he will get it,” a White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He has remarked that it will go to someone who writes a book about how Donald Trump thinks rather than Donald Trump himself.”
In a visit to the White House in April, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was asked about Trump’s prospects of winning the award, announced annually in Oslo.
He didn’t bite.
“On that prize, that is a committee taking care of that which is completely working on its own terms and I cannot comment on that,” Støre said.
Trump smiled and looked across the Cabinet Room table at the prime minister: “I like that question,” he said.
The award is solely in the hands of the Nobel selection committee; politicians don’t pick the winner. But Trump has reportedly raised the issue with Norway before. Last month, he called the country’s finance minister, former NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, to talk tariffs and brought up the peace prize, a Norwegian news outlet wrote Thursday.
The White House official said that the president and Stoltenberg did speak, but could not say that the conversation was focused on the prize. Stoltenberg’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump is surrounded by reminders of past presidents who’ve won what is arguably humanity’s most prestigious award. Obama, whose portrait hangs in the White House, won it less than a year into his presidency and even he acknowledged at the time that his accomplishments were “slight” in contrast to other Nobel laureates.
Just a few paces from the Oval Office, Theodore Roosevelt’s Nobel Prize is on display, signifying both the challenge and opportunity that Trump faces. Roosevelt won in 1906 for bringing an end to another Russian conflict: a war with Japan.
As much as he aligns himself politically with working Americans, Trump has long been attuned to elite opinion. He takes pride in recounting that his late uncle, John Trump, taught at the acclaimed Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has described his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, as “the hardest school to get into, the best school in the world.”
In announcing the Kennedy Center honorees on Wednesday, Trump said that he had long wanted one for himself. The president now plans to host the Kennedy Center Honors this year, teasing to reporters, “maybe … next year we’ll honor Trump.”
A Nobel Peace Prize would be the ultimate validation.
“If the Israel-Hamas/Iran and Russia-Ukraine conflicts get resolved, there’s no way that they can’t give President Trump the Nobel Peace Prize,” O’Brien said.
“The Nobel committee may not like Trump,” he added. “They may not like his personality. They may not like his populism, but if the award has any meaning, they have to give it to him.”
Of course, the Nobel selection committee has its own ideas about what it takes to win. The five-member body appointed by the Norwegian parliament may be weighing other criteria apart from the peace deals the White House has tallied.
In his will, Alfred Nobel stated that the prize should go to those “who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations.”
Since Trump took office, some longtime U.S. allies have seen fraternal bonds fray. Trump has rolled out stiff tariffs in pursuit of an “America First” agenda meant to create more jobs at home. He stunned various world capitals with his calls for acquiring Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal.
“Trump’s desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize has become something of a joke in foreign capitals,” a former British diplomat said. “His claims to Canada, Panama, Greenland, etc., as well as tariff wars and the assaults on America’s democratic institutions, incline governments in the opposite direction.”
What happens in the Nobel committee’s closed-door deliberations is a closely guarded secret. The panel accepts nominations through the end of January and announces the winner in October. It waits 50 years before revealing even a list of nominees.
Handicapping possible winners of the 2025 prize, a Norwegian think tank didn’t mention Trump’s name. The handful of front-runners the group cited included “Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms,” the prime minister of Qatar, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, and the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom.
It’s far from clear that the Nobel committee is susceptible to persuasion. Pressure, publicity and coalition-building work in politics, the arena Trump knows well. But the Nobel committee is insulated from that world.
The prize “is not something you campaign for,” a Western diplomat said. “This is a decision made by people who are independent and have their own point of view. You can’t buy it. Norway doesn’t need the money.”
Last week, Trump held a meeting at the White House with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to mark a rapprochement between the two countries. Questioned by a reporter, both leaders plumped for Trump’s Nobel candidacy.
Nikol Pashinyan, prime minister of Armenia, said, “We will promote for that.”
Turning to Trump, he said, “Hopefully you will invite us” to the award ceremony.
“Front row,” Trump said.
