President Donald Trump hasn’t exactly distinguished himself with his attachment to the truth. This past Friday at a Rose Garden press conference, he claimed that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize — but it’s not even immediately clear he was telling the truth.
Trump ranted:
‘Prime Minister Abe of Japan gave me the most beautiful copy of a letter that he sent to the people that give out a thing called the Nobel Prize. He said, “I have nominated you, respectfully on behalf of Japan, I am asking them to give you the Nobel Peace Prize.” I said thank you, many other people feel that way too. I’ll probably never get it. That’s okay. They gave it to Obama — he didn’t even know what he got it for. He was there for about 15 seconds, and he got the Nobel Prize. He said , “Oh, what did I get it for?”‘
The Japanese Embassy in the U.S. simply said they had no comment on the matter — and if the nomination had really been submitted, you’d think news of it would have come out before now (the nomination deadline was weeks ago) and the Japanese government might be at least a little prepared to answer for it.
Why is the issue anywhere near the top of the president’s agenda, anyway? If he’s really so good at this dealmaking and moving forward and making America great again or whatever, why is he still griping about Obama?
Trump claimed that he deserved the Nobel Prize — and Abe nominated him, supposedly — because of his work towards the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. To be clear, North Korea not only still maintains nuclear capabilities, but they’ve also taken significant steps forward towards being able to strike the United States while Trump has been in office. Meanwhile, Trump has veered between dramatic extremes of threatening to literally wipe North Korea off the map and claiming to have fallen in love with their dictator, who he will be meeting with again soon.
Because there’s been a temporary lull in their missile testing and they’ve come to the negotiating table — both things they’ve done before — all is well and Trump has saved the day yet again and deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, apparently.
He claimed to reporters outside the White House recently:
‘When I came here, this country was headed to war with North Korea, and now we have a very good dialogue going… it’s very special, and with anybody else but me, you’d be in war right now… You would right now be in a nice big fat war in Asia with North Korea if I wasn’t elected president.’
In fact, former Obama security adviser Ben Rhodes shared:
‘We were not on the brink of war with North Korea in 2016. Highlighting the longstanding and widely known threat of North Korea’s nuclear program is very different from saying you’re about to start a big war.’
Trump had claimed that Barack Obama himself told him that the United States was on the brink of war with North Korea — but advisers including Rhodes have insisted that’s nonsense, and Obama instead simply tried to relay the facts of the situation.
The president just keeps making stuff up, and yet he expects us to trust him to lead us through foreign policy crises anyway.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
