Donald Trump says he deserves a Nobel Prize for ‘a lot of things’
(SCMP) – US President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that he deserves a Nobel Prize for “a lot of things” but complained that the committee that hands out the awards does so unfairly.
The comment came during a bilateral meeting in New York with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan after Trump said he was “ready, willing and able” to mediate between India and Pakistan in a decades-old dispute over the territory of Kashmir.
“If you can solve this outstanding issue of Kashmir, very likely and definitely you’ll be deserving a Nobel Prize,” a Pakistani journalist told Trump.
“I think I’m going to get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly, which they do not,” Trump said.
He also alluded to former president Barack Obama’s 2009 Nobel Prize, which the Norwegian Nobel Committee said was in recognition of work on nuclear non-proliferation and creating a “new climate” in international relations.
“They gave one to Obama immediately after his ascent to the presidency, and he had no idea why he got it,” Trump told reporters in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. “You know what, that was the only thing I agreed with him on.”
Trump has previously suggested he should be considered for a Nobel Prize for his efforts to denuclearise the Korean peninsula.
Trump hailed his own negotiating skills after he arrived at the UN in New York, where rising tensions with Iran threatened to overshadow the UN General Assembly this year.
The US president has said he would not rule out meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rowhani, but also said no such face-to-face was scheduled, indicating it likely would not happen, despite a plethora of sit-downs listed on his planner.
Trump repeatedly used his first set of bilateral meetings with world leaders to label Iran “the number one state of terror in the world”.
The US president also met Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi, heaping praise on his counterpart, saying the strongman has “brought order” to the Middle Eastern country since he took over.
Al-Sissi’s rise to power was facilitated, in part, by a bloody crackdown.
