White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt raised eyebrows Thursday after demanding that President Donald Trump be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
Leavitt declared that Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace deals or ceasefire agreements across six global conflicts. While a number of conflicts have de-escalated in recent months, the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip are still ongoing.
“The President has now ended conflicts between Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo and Egypt and Ethiopia,” Leavitt said on Thursday.
“This means President Trump 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 continued.
The claims quickly drew reactions on social media, with many users challenging Leavitt’s assertions. Political commentator Aaron Parnas pointed out on social media platform X that the wars that Trump promised to end are still going on.
“The war between Russia and Ukraine is ongoing, the mass starvation crisis in Gaza continues, there has been no ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. All of the wars Trump promised to end, are as bad or worse today than when he took office,” Parnas wrote in a Thursday post.
The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols posted a sarcastic remark in response to Leavitt, while The New Republic’s Greg Sargent said he was “definitely interested in knowing who wrote this.”
In a separate post, Sargent described Leavitt’s comments as “unreal.”
Another user wrote: “Is she out of her mind?”
Some of Trump’s closest supporters have already nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Trump he would nominate him for the award when the two leaders met at the White House earlier this month.
Trump’s nominators have included a group of U.S. House Republicans and two Norwegian lawmakers. The groups separately nominated him in 2018 for his work to ease nuclear tensions with North Korea. One of the Norwegians nominated him again for the 2021 prize for his efforts in the Middle East, as did a Swedish lawmaker.
Not all of the nominations have been valid: The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects the prize winners, said in 2018 that someone using a stolen identity had nominated Trump at least twice.
Nominations can be made by a select group of people and organizations, including heads of state or politicians serving at a national level, university professors, directors of foreign policy institutes, past Nobel Prize recipients and members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee itself.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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