Trump Responds to Nobel Peace Prize Nomination: 'A Great Thing for Our Country'
The president who fought to loosen the Islamic State group’s stranglehold on Iraq and Syria says his nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize is proof to the world that the United States wants a world at peace, not war.
“I’m very honored by it. It’s a tremendous thing I think for our country,” Trump told Fox News Radio White House correspondent Jon Decker during an interview Thursday on “Fox News Rundown.”
Trump was nominated by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of the Norwegian Parliament, who focused on the recent deal to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
“For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” Tybring-Gjedde said, according to Fox News.
“It’s a great honor to be nominated. It has tremendous significance,” Trump said. “I just think it’s a great thing for our country. It shows that we’re trying to make peace, not war all the time.”
Trump said that agreement is part of a worldwide effort to end long-standing conflicts.
“We’re working on a peace deal in Afghanistan, working directly with the Taliban, and that’s going along pretty well, and we’ll probably know about that fairly soon,” the president said. “So we’re looking to create a lot of peace around the world because the world has other problems that we have to focus on.”
Trump indicated his combative style that takes many out of their comfort zone achieves results in the end.
“I think sometimes you have to break up the eggs to make the omelet,” he said.
“Sometimes you do have to go in and rough it up and mix it up, so to speak. And then all of a sudden you come out with something that could be very beautiful.”
Trump said past administrations that were mired in traditional government perspectives “never had the talent to get there and to negotiate these deals.
“And I will tell you that other countries from the Middle East are dying to come in. They are, they want to come in so badly. ‘Why didn’t you call us?’ We’re going to start piecing it all together like a beautiful puzzle,” he said.
“It’s been a very complex puzzle for a lot of people. But I understood it and I do understand it. They want peace. They’ve been fighting for decades and decades and they’ve been fighting for centuries in some cases. And they would like to see peace and it’s going to happen.”
While speaking to the media on Wednesday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters that peace has always been the end game of the Trump presidency.
“President Trump’s foreign policy will always be one of peace through strength, and that is what the American people are seeing abroad. Career politicians merely talk about the kind of results this president has achieved on the world stage,” she said.
McEnany said Trump has used force when force is required.
“President Trump has also defeated terrorists. The ISIS caliphate is destroyed. Al-Baghdadi is no longer on the battlefield, along with Iranian General Soleimani,” she said.
“In addition to these priorities, President Trump has made peace a cornerstone of his recent foreign policy efforts. The peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates led to the first flight from Israel over Saudi Arabia’s airspace to the United Arab Emirates,” McEnany added. “President Trump has also brokered economic normalization between Serbia and Kosovo, a major breakthrough in this decades-old conflict.”
McEnany said Trump’s unique approach has made peace possible.
“These wins are possible because of the president’s leadership and outsider perspective. President Trump addresses old challenges with new solutions and delivers results for the American people,” she said.
During his Thursday interview, Trump said nations have a choice, because the U.S. military is ready to deal with those who reject peace.
“This is a different age, militarily. We’ve just spent $2.5 trillion on military equipment and other things having to do with our military,” he said. “We’ve never had more modern equipment, and today it’s equipment that’s much different than it was even 10 years ago, even five years ago. And we don’t necessarily have to be there.”
Foreign leaders “have an understanding and they’ve all been told that [if] anything happens, we can be back so fast with a power that’s far greater than we have right now,” Trump added.
If Trump is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he would be the fifth American president to win the coveted honor.
Then-President Theodore Roosevelt won the prize in 1906, then-President Woodrow Wilson in 1920 and former President Jimmy Carter in 2002. Then-President Barack Obama was awarded the peace prize in 2009, only nine months after entering office.
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