Trump Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize By Anti-Immigrant Norwegian Politician

A right-wing politician from Norway with a history of anti-immigrant remarks has nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

A nomination for Trump is a long way from becoming the fifth U.S. president to win the award. The only requirement in the nominations process is it must be submitted by a valid nominator. That list includes any humanities professor, former professor, or associate professor, any member of a national parliament, and any head of state. Candidates cannot nominate themselves. There are 318 candidates for the 2020 prize currently.

Trump's nomination follows the peace deal he helped broker between Israel and the UAE. The deal has resulted in a historic airline flight between the two countries and is expected to be signed at the White House this week.

Relations between the two countries have been improving for the past decade. Critics of the deal say that the deal has cost Israel nothing in exchange for a weakened position for Palestinians under Israeli control, who could previously point to a united front of Arab countries supporting them politically.

Trump was nominated by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a right-wing anti-immigrant politician in Norway. Tybring-Gjedde has a history of making racially charged statements and believes that Islamic immigrants are leading Norway to ruin, according to his 2014 book “While The Orchestra Continues Playing.”

Tybring-Gjedde was charged with racism after a speech in which said that immigrants were more violent than native Norwegians due to their culture, and would threaten Norwegians for having light hair or eating salami sandwiches. Tybring-Gjedde maintains that he is not racist, a defense which he is forced to mount with some regularity.

This is also not the first Nobel nomination from Tybring-Gjedde. In 2006 he nominated acclaimed anti-Islamic filmmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He also nominated Trump for the award in 2018. Nominations are kept secret for 50 years by the selection committee, although nominators seeking more publicity are free to announce their selections.

Trump also received nominations in 2017 and 2018 that were later withdrawn from being “openly fraudulent,” although no perpetrator was ever caught. The fake nominations were suspected to originate from the U.S.

Reactions on social media were decidedly mixed. Apart from the standard crowing from the right and dismay from the left, critics of Trump were quick to point out that the bar for nomination was extremely low, that Tybring-Gjedde was far from unbiased, and that past nominees include Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Michael Jackson.

Previous U.S. presidents to win the award were Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919, Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Barack Obama in 2009. Carter won after he left office.