Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of Norway's conservative Progress Party, nominated U.S. President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering a deal normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Pool Photo by Doug Mills/UPI |
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Sept. 9 (UPI) -- For the second time, a Norwegian lawmaker has nominated U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, this time for brokering a deal normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of Norway's conservative Progress Party, told Fox News on Wednesday that although he is not a big supporter of the U.S. president he deserves recognition for his work on the deal.
"For [Trump's] merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other peace prize nominees," Tybring-Gjedde said. "The [Nobel] committee should look at the facts and judge him on the facts - not on the way he behaves sometimes."
Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, described the nomination as "a hard-earned and well-deserved honor for this president."
"Career politicians merely talk about the kind of results that this president has achieved on the world stage," she said.
About 320 people were nominated for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, which will be announced in October. Trump was nominated for the 2021 prize.
Tybring-Gjedde and another member of the far-right party nominated Trump for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for the president's role in bringing reconciliation to North and South Korea.
The White House is scheduled on Tuesday to host the Israeli and Emirati delegations for a signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords, which commemorates the normalization of relations between the two countries.
In August, during a phone call, Trump finalized a deal with Israeli Prime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy supreme commander of the United Arab Emirates.
As part of the deal, Israel agreed to suspend efforts to annex parts of the West Bank.
The two countries agreed to collaborate on stem cell therapies to treat COVID-19, the two countries announced in August. On Aug. 31, the first commercial airline flight between Israel and UAE flew over Saudi Arabian air space.
Four U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: President Barack Obama in 2009, President Jimmy Carter in 2002, President Woodrow Wilson in 1920 and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.
Trump has said that he deserves the Nobel Prize.
"I think I'm going to get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly, which they don't," Trump said in December.
Before being elected president, Trump criticized the Nobel Committee's choice of President Obama multiple times, including tweeting that the prize should be revoked.