President Donald J. Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by two Norwegian lawmakers due to his efforts to secure peace with North Korea.
From Fortune magazine:
The U.S leader was nominated by two members of Norway’s governing Progress Party, according to state broadcaster NRK. The deadline for this year’s prize passed in January, so this nomination would make him eligible for next year. It is unclear whether he was nominated for this year’s prize.
The Nobel committee themselves will not confirm the nomination, because they have a rule restricting exposure of the nominee names to those at least fifty years in the past. There are hundreds of officials and prior recipients who are eligible to make nominations, however, and they are free to reveal their nominations to the public.
It is due to the rule allowing nominators to reveal their nominees that we know some others who have been nominated, even though they have not won.
Former nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize include:
Vladimir Putin (National Geographic)
Fidel Castro (nominated in 2001 by a Norwegian lawmaker) (BBC)
Joseph Stalin (twice, in 1945 and 1948) (Nobel Prize Committee)
Benito Mussolini (Sputnik)
Adolph Hitler (Sputnik, again)
But, to be fair, those are only the nominees. Let’s look at some of the past recipients of the prize…
President Obama
The European Union
Yasser Arafat
Until recent months, the Nobel Peace Prize was viewed by many in the United States as a prize that had no inherent value, because it had been used to shower praise both upon the deserving and the obviously undeserving. That view, as with so many others, seems to have been abandoned in favor of political expediency.
