White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters in Japan on Tuesday that the country’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will nominate President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
It was unclear if Takaichi’s nomination would be tied to any specific achievement. The Hill has reached out to the Japanese Embassy in Washington for comment.
This would not be the first time a Japanese leader has floated nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump said in 2019 that the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated him for the prize.
The press secretary’s announcement comes as a number of world leaders have sought to win Trump’s favor through a Nobel Peace Prize nod, as he seeks to present himself as a global peacemaker.
Trump said in an address to U.S. troops in Japan on Tuesday that U.S. sailors stand ready to “wreck,” “sink,” and “blast” any threat to the U.S. “into oblivion,” adding that the statement may hurt his Nobel Peace Prize chances.
“That’s a terrible statement for me to make,” he said. “That’s the end of it because everybody said that I should immediately get the Nobel Peace Award. With that statement, that takes me out of the run.”
Leaders from Cambodia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Israel, among others, have nominated Trump for the award this year alone. Various Republican lawmakers have also put the president’s name forward for the award.
Despite his intense public lobbying for the award, Trump was not selected by the Norwegian Nobel committee this year. Instead, the award went to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for her work promoting democratic rights.
Trump met with Takaichi in Tokyo on Tuesday, where the two leaders exchanged praise for each other.
“Anything I can do to help Japan, we will be there,” Trump said. “We are an ally at the strongest level.”
Takaichi, who took office as Japan’s first female prime minister days ago, invoked Abe, her former mentor and close Trump ally, in her praise for the president.
“Prime Minister Abe often told me about your dynamic diplomacy,” Takaichi told the president.
