For years, Donald Trump has been obsessed with presidential power, revenge against his enemies and... winning the Nobel Peace Prize, writes Axios.
The Trump administration is currently aggressively pushing for the Nobel Prize - the obsession that has eluded him. This was the subtext of the scandal in the Oval Office on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Discussion of the prize is increasingly shaping the way administration officials talk about the president at a time when he is seeking to end the fighting in Ukraine and Gaza.
In February, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said that Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for his role in trying to end the Russia-Ukraine war. "If it's fairly awarded, I think in a year, he should get it from what I've seen," Besant noted.
New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Trump's nominee to be his ambassador to the United Nations, used her speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week to call for Trump to win the Nobel Prize. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and National Security Adviser Mike Walz did the same.
"Ultimately, the Nobel Prize will sit next to Donald J. Trump"s name, Walz said.
Trump's ability to win the Nobel Prize will depend in no small part on whether he can end the fighting in Ukraine. And Friday's explosive meeting - which ended with Trump ousting Zelensky from the White House and horrifying the United States' European allies - could deal a serious blow to that goal.
Trump longs to win the Nobel Prize, but even before Friday's televised melee he doubted that the committee that awards it - which is appointed by Norway's parliament - would ever award one to him.
In his frustration, Trump criticized the Nobel committee for awarding the prize to former President Barack Obama. Just months after becoming president in 2009, Obama was honored for his efforts to limit nuclear weapons and improve relations with the Muslim world.
In 2019, Trump said he should get the prize "for a lot of things, if they were fair - which they are not." They gave one to Obama right after he took office, and he had no idea why he got it. That was the only thing I agreed with him on."
Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times during his presidency, including by Norwegian politician Christian Tybring-Goede and Swedish politician Magnus Jacobson during his first term. However, he came up empty-handed.
Most recently, last year, Congresswoman Claudia Tenney nominated Trump for brokering the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. He did not win.
Nevertheless, Trump remains focused on the prize.
During an Oval Office meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, Trump was asked by a reporter if he hoped to win the Nobel Peace Prize if he helped end the war in Gaza. "I deserve it", he said once again, "but they would never give it to me".
This year, Trump has once again been nominated for the award. Anat Alon-Beck, an Israeli-born professor at Case Western Reserve University’s Law School, last month sent a letter to the Nobel committee advocating for Trump.
Alon-Beck’s nomination, submitted just before the Jan. 31 deadline, argues that Trump should win the Nobel Prize based on his early work to secure a Middle East peace agreement.
"By securing the release of hostages, standing firm against anti-Semitism, and promoting historic agreements that bring stability to the world’s most volatile regions, Trump has once again demonstrated why he deserves it," Alon-Beck wrote.
Alon-Beck said she had not been in contact with the White House about the two-page letter she sent to the Nobel committee.
According to Trump’s advisers and others close to his team, his Nobel case will be strengthened if he helps end the war in Gaza and broker a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel that includes a breakthrough toward a Palestinian state.
Trump has made a controversial proposal to evict nearly 2 million Palestinians from the war-torn Gaza Strip and relocate them to "better housing" in Egypt or Jordan. But neither country seems willing to join the plan.
Critics of Trump's foreign policy say he doesn't deserve a Nobel Prize because it's unclear whether he will achieve lasting peace in the Middle East or between Ukraine and Russia.
Trump's apparent embrace of Russia at the expense of Ukraine and NATO could also weigh heavily on the Norwegian jury's decision.
Trump has said that since Obama got the prize early in his term, he should get it too, said John Bolton, who was national security adviser during Trump's first term and is now a critic of the president.
"I would turn it around. They should be treated equally - none of them deserve it," he said.
The nomination window for the 2025 Nobel Prizes closed in January. The committee's website says it is preparing a list of nominees. The winners will be announced in October.