'Not politicking for it': Trump goes all in on Nobel push with risky Putin summit

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump could be risking his push for a Nobel Peace Prize with a high-stakes meeting Friday in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But he’s got plenty of backers around the globe for the gold-plated prize.

“We’re going to have a meeting with Vladimir Putin, and at the end of that meeting, probably in the first two minutes, I’ll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made,” Trump said Monday during a White House news conference.

A reporter asked him how he would know, prompting Trump to reply: “Because that’s what I do, I make deals.”

Trump on Monday appeared to understand the stakes of the Alaska summit, even trying to manage expectations, saying, “I’m not going to make a deal. It’s not up to me to make a deal. I think a deal should be made for both.”

Instead, he described his role as more of a mediator: “I’m going to meet with President Putin, and we’re going to see what he has in mind. And if it’s a fair deal, I’ll reveal it to the European Union leaders and to the NATO leaders, and also to President Zelenskyy.”

Still, if Trump flies back late Friday night on Air Force One having made no progress on his pledge to bring peace to Europe, it could leave a glaring hole in his Peace Prize résumé.

Trump called the White House a “different building” from the one he found in January, a reference to gold leaf in the Oval Office, gold-colored table umbrellas in the paved-over Rose Garden and other changes he ordered. But the anti-war president has also made clear that he’d like to add the Nobel Committee’s cherished 18-karat peace medallion to his increasingly gold-themed White House.

“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be, a peacemaker and a unifier,” the president said during his Jan. 20 inaugural address.

“I’m not politicking for it,” Trump insisted on Friday, adding, “I have a lot of people that are. … It would be a great honor, certainly. … I’m not doing it for that. … I want to save lives.”

The leaders of two former Soviet states, Armenia and Azerbaijan, on Friday both backed Trump winning the peace prize as they signed a pathway-to-peace pact and other agreements they credited Trump with negotiating.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Vovayi Pashinyan told a reporter that Trump “deserved to have [the] Nobel Peace Prize. … We will defend that. … We will promote for that. And that’s obvious.”

Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president, said of the peace pact: “President Trump in six months did a miracle.”

The Hudson Institute’s Luke Coffey, a former British diplomatic official, said in a Thursday X post that Trump was seeking to fill a peacemaking vacuum: “Russian influence in Eurasia is waning. Time for a U.S. diplomatic offensive in the region.”

Trump recently has contended he has “stopped six wars.” According to FactCheck.org, “Trump’s statement contains an element of truth but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.”

That hasn’t stopped him.

“Well, they should give me the Nobel Prize for Rwanda, and if you look, the Congo, or you could say Serbia, Kosovo. You could say a lot of them,” Trump told reporters after deplaning Air Force One on June 20 in Morristown, N.J. “The big one is India and Pakistan. … I should have gotten it four or five times. … I would think the Abraham Accords would be a good one too.

“They won’t give me a Nobel Peace Prize, ’cause they only give it to liberals,” he said of the Nobel selection panel.

Trump on July 31 dispatched White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to put his self-nomination in even more blunt terms.

“President Trump has brokered on average about one peace deal or ceasefire per month during his six months in office,” she said. “It’s well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Why stop there?

“A lot of these things are working really, really well. You know, a lot of people … talk about Donald Trump for the peace prize, the Nobel Peace Prize,” White House trade and manufacturing adviser Peter Navarro said on July 31. “I’m thinking that since he’s basically taught the world trade economics, he might be up for the Nobel on economics.

“Because this is a fundamental restructuring of the global trade environment,” Navarro added. “And everything that he’s doing has defied the critics.”

Republicans and Democrats are split.

Rep. Brad Sherman raised concerns that a push within the second Trump administration to secure the peace prize for their loyalty-demanding boss could undermine broader U.S. interests.

“My fear is that, then [State Department officials] will make trade concessions in order to achieve other foreign-policy objectives because the people we’ve hired at the State Department are people who dream of a Nobel Prize,” the California Democrat said during a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing in May.

‘You should get it’

During a House Appropriations Committee hearing in May, Illinois Democrat Mike Quigley said Trump’s treatment of Putin was too reminiscent of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938, when he inked the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland. Chamberlain said the deal was meant to prevent war, but his attempts to appease German Chancellor Adolf Hitler are now viewed as a history-changing blunder.

“This is more like Chamberlain than someone who’s trying to win a Nobel Peace Prize,” Quigley said.

A group of Republican senators on June 16 led by John Cornyn, who is fighting for his political life in a Texas GOP primary, introduced a resolution calling for Trump to get the award over his Iran strikes. That measure “concurs that President Trump’s efforts to reestablish deterrence are aimed at achieving lasting peace in the Middle East and worthy of consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize,” according to a summary.

Georgia GOP Rep. Mike Collins on July 18 blasted out a fundraising email making a Nobel pitch.

“President Trump has done more to PROMOTE PEACE than any other leader in history: NEUTRALIZING Iran’s nuclear facilities. FORGING peace deals across the Middle East. DEFUSING violent war between India & Pakistan,” the email reads, providing recipients a link to a webpage seeking donations from $20 to $1,000 overseen by WinRed, which helps stack campaign cash for Republican candidates.

Trump has been nominated by several other countries, including Israel and Cambodia. And he has been endorsed by other world leaders.

“So I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize Committee. It’s nominating you for the peace prize, which is well deserved and you should get it,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a July 7 dinner at the White House. During an event two days later, a reporter asked African leaders if they would nominate Trump.

“A Nobel Peace Prize, while I don’t see any problem with it, I think that President Trump deserves it for all the efforts that he’s worked on,” said Brice Oligui Nguema, the president of Gabon. “And he brought peace back in the [southern Africa] region. That is my region, the region where [the Democratic Republic of Congo] and Rwanda signed a deal.

“And so he is now bringing peace back into a region where that was never possible,” he added. “So I believe that he does deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. That is my opinion on this.”

To be sure, Oddspedia, an international website focused on sports betting data and other gambling categories, put Trump very much in the running. He was second at 16.7 percent, trailing only Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. She has remained a leading Putin critic and led the odds at 28.6 percent.

Jeff Le, a former California state official who worked with the first Trump administration, told Oddspedia that “for the president, it’s about validation and prestige.”

“It’s about being in the in-crowd. While he values monetary distinction and enrichment, the [Nobel Peace] Prize is seen as a symbol that he is not slighted,” Le added. “One could argue that bombing Iran’s nuclear program could be a peace-building measure and protects American allies and interests. But it does not necessarily signal a clear reduction in tensions or peace.”