When President Trump was asked this summer whether he had Oct. 10, the date that the Nobel Peace Prize would be announced, circled on his calendar, he dodged the question.
“I can’t say. I mean, a lot of people say no matter what I did — because you know, I’m of a certain persuasion — no matter what I do, they won’t give it up,” Mr. Trump said.
“I’m not politicking for it,” he added. “I have a lot of people that are.”
If Mr. Trump didn’t have the date circled on his calendar, it has certainly been circling in his head — he has been lobbying for years. On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce the winner of the prize in Oslo, Norway’s capital, naming a laureate who aligns with its namesake, Alfred Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish industrialist.
The prize will be unveiled 48 hours after Mr. Trump announced what could be a major diplomatic triumph in ending the brutal war in the Gaza Strip, which the president is already claiming as one of the many conflicts he says he has helped resolve since taking office.
“BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!” read the end of Mr. Trump’s social media post announcing a deal between Israel and Hamas after two years of war.
Still, Mr. Trump may not qualify this year at all. The prize typically rewards achievements from the year before, and in 2024, Mr. Trump had been elected but not yet sworn in as president. And the head of the committee said that the decision on this year’s laureate had been made on Monday.
What’s more, Mr. Trump’s chances could be undercut by his domestic agenda, which includes his crackdown on dissent, attacks on academic freedom and deploying the U.S. military against American cities. And some experts say Mr. Trump’s attempt to cast himself as a global peacebroker has been clouded by his decisions to side with aggressors such as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and to break from alliances that promote international cooperation.
Even before the Gaza deal, Mr. Trump has argued that he is more than deserving of the prize, which has been awarded to four other American presidents. (They are Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, who was awarded one decades after he left the White House.) A member of Congress nominated Mr. Trump in December for the agreements to normalize relations between Israel and Arab nations, called the Abraham Accords, that he brokered in his first term.
Mr. Trump’s lobbying effort also dates back to his first term, and continued through his campaign for a second term, when he bitterly complained about Mr. Obama being awarded the prize less than nine months after taking office, for confronting “the great climatic challenges.” Mr. Obama acknowledged that at the time of his win, his accomplishments were “slight,” and his announcement elicited controversy.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has discussed the prize at length more than a half dozen times — oftentimes vacillating between indignation, exasperation and bracing himself for disappointment.
He first sounded off on the prize in February during an Oval Office meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, one of several world leaders who has endorsed Mr. Trump receiving the prize.
“They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me.”
On Wednesday, when asked about his chances, Mr. Trump appeared resigned to the fact that they were slim despite his having settled several conflicts. “Perhaps they’ll find a reason not to give it to me,” he said. “You know, perhaps they will.”
Mr. Trump has also drawn the ire of some of the panel’s members. Shortly after Mr. Trump won the election, Jorgen Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and secretary general of PEN Norway, cited him by name in an interview when he talked about the “erosion of freedom of expression, even in democratic nations.”
Nina Graeger, the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, a group that researches international peace efforts and compiles an unofficial list of potential Nobel recipients each year, called Mr. Trump’s public campaign for the prize “unusual” and his claims to have ended seven (sometimes 10) conflicts “bold.”
“I think the committee should distinguish between the way in which Mr. Trump expresses himself or the way in which he has talked about his candidacy, and his actual achievements,” she said.
Ms. Graeger said that while the committee has considered year-of accomplishments in the past, the prize specifically honors “sustainable and lasting peace.” Should the Gaza peace plan prove successful, it could bolster Mr. Trump’s candidacy next year, she said.
But Mr. Trump has spent the past few months ratcheting up his campaign to secure the prize.
“No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do,” he wrote on social media in June, “including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!”
In a September speech to top military leaders in Quantico, Va., Mr. Trump complained that he didn’t get enough credit while downplaying how much he cared about the prize.
“They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing,” he said. “They’ll give it to a guy that wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump and what it took to solve the wars.”
He then added: “No, but let’s see what happens. But it’d be a big insult to our country, I will tell you that. I don’t want it. I want the country to get it.”
Mr. Trump also used his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month to make his pitch on the global stage.
“Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements,” he said. “But for me, the real prize will be the sons and daughters who live to grow up with their mothers and fathers because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless and unglorious wars. What I care about is not winning prizes, it’s saving lives.”
Ms. Graeger also noted that some of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy aims run counter to the prize’s criteria — such as peaceful disarmament and international cooperation — given the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, its withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and its cuts to international humanitarian aid programs like U.S.A.I.D. She added that Mr. Trump’s domestic policy agenda points to an “infringement of the basic democratic rights.”
But she noted that the committee had not shied away from controversial decisions.
“The more holistic picture will depend on what the committee wants to emphasize when they look at the candidates,” she said. “A candidate doesn’t have to be perfect.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Luke Broadwater and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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