President Donald Trump has boasted that he halted a war between two countries that have never fought and are 4,000 miles apart.
The U.S. president has repeatedly said how much he deserves to win the Nobel Peace Prize for stopping “seven” world conflicts, even though the number and his involvement are disputed.
However, at the American Cornerstone Institute’s Founders’ Dinner, Trump went even further by inventing a war he claimed to have solved.
It is unclear whether the artificial conflict was another senior moment for Trump, 79, or an attempt at self-promotion gone wrong.
In his bizarre and rambling speech, during which he listed the wars he claims to have ended, Trump drifted into the land of fantasy.
“Cambodia and Armenia,” the 79-year-old said. “It was just starting, and it was a bad one. Think of that.”
In reality, there’s been no Cambodia–Armenia conflict for anyone to “settle.” The distance between the two capitals, Phnom Penh and Yerevan, is around 4,150 miles.
Cambodia’s flare-up was actually with Thailand, while Armenia’s long-running fight has been with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
In August, Cambodia’s Prime Minister joined Pakistan and Israel in nominating Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, crediting the U.S. president’s “visionary and innovative diplomacy” with halting his country’s border clashes with Thailand.
The nomination followed five days of hostilities in July that left at least 43 people dead and displaced more than 300,000. A truce began after phone calls from Trump and mediation by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, which paved the way for a ceasefire on July 28.
Trump’s slip was even more strange, given he had moments earlier told the audience at George Washington’s Mount Vernon about how he’d helped end fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan, when the two leaders came to the Oval Office in August.
While it is true that Trump hosted the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House and announced a peace declaration, whether it delivers a durable peace remains to be seen.
He then went on, “We have, uh, let’s see, Cambodia, Armenia…we have Kosovo, Serbia, Israel, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia. That’s a beauty. They built the little dam in Ethiopia. That’s like the largest dam in the world.”
Trump’s Cambodia–Armenia mix-up is becoming part of a months-long pattern of geographical gaffes by the president. Just last Thursday, he garbled which country’s war he’d “solved,” swapping nations entirely.
In August, he blanked when trying to remember the name of the Pacific Ocean, and earlier this month, he bragged he had “just left” the Middle East despite his last trip there being months earlier.
He’s also stumbled over basic facts and simple arithmetic. In a Fox News hit last Friday, Trump promised drug prices would drop “1,000 percent,” which is a mathematical impossibility unless the government or drug companies plan to pay people to take meds.
And during last week’s Windsor Castle appearance, Trump rambled through an error-strewn address.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
The post Trump, 79, So Desperate to Win Nobel Prize He Makes Up a War He’s ‘Solved’ appeared first on The Daily Beast.
