Two Norwegian lawmakers have nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize after his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
On Wednesday, Christian Tybring-Gjedde and Per-Willy Amundsen, lawmakers with the right-wing, populist Progress Party, told a Norwegian news agency that Trump “had taken a huge and important step in the direction of the disarmament, peace and reconciliation between North and South Korea.”
A group of U.S. lawmakers nominated Trump for the prize earlier this year, before the summit had taken place (and before it was canceled, then reinstated). The nomination process for this year’s prize ended in January, and it’s unclear if Trump is in the running. The Nobel committee receives hundreds of nominations annually; this year brought 330, a record number.
Other U.S. lawmakers, along with foreign-policy analysts, are less sanguine about the meeting between Trump and Kim. Several point out that the four-point communiqué issued at the end of the meeting contained only provisions North Korea had already agreed to in summits dating back to the 1990s.
Trump has also been criticized for meeting with the leader of one of the most repressive regimes in the world without discussing human rights. The United Nations has cited North Korea for widespread crimes against humanity, including “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation,” according to a 2014 UN report.
And in a press conference after the document signing — the details of which were not released to Congress or U.S. allies ahead of time — President Trump said he had agreed to terminate joint military exercises with South Korea, which have been going on since the 1950s. Trump neglected to notify South Korea, or the U.S. military, of those plans before the press conference.
Four U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: Barack Obama in 2009, Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and Jimmy Carter in 2002.
