Claiming yet again that he solved the conflict between India and Pakistan, US President Donald Trump has said that “no one in history is more deserving than him” of the Nobel Peace Prize, as he criticised former President Barack Obama for getting the honour even though he “didn’t do anything”.
Trump, during a meeting in the White House on Friday with oil and gas executives to discuss plans for the Venezuelan oil reserves, also reiterated his claim that eight jets were shot down in the conflict in May last year without clarifying to which country they belonged.
“Look whether people like Trump or don’t like Trump, I settled eight wars, big ones. Some going on for 36 years, 32 years, 31 years, 28 years, 25 years, some just getting ready to start like India and Pakistan, where already eight jets were shot out of the air,” Trump said.
The US president also said that Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who had visited the White House last year, credited him for saving millions of lives by stopping the conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
This is the second time in as many days that Trump has claimed credit for stopping the conflict between India and Pakistan, an assertion he has now made innumerable times since May 10 last year when he announced on social media that the two countries agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington.
India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7 last year, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians.
India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes. India has consistently denied any third-party intervention.
Trump further said that no one in history is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than him since he has stopped eight wars within eight months of his second term in the White House.
He rebuked Obama for getting the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after assuming office in 2009 even though he “didn’t do anything”.
“I can’t think of anybody in history that should get the Nobel Prize more than me and I don’t want to be bragging, but nobody else settled wars. Obama got the Nobel Prize. He had no idea why. He still has no idea. He walks around, he says, ‘I got the Nobel Prize’. Why did he get a Nobel Prize? He got it almost immediately upon attaining office, and he didn’t do anything, and he was a bad president,” Trump said.
Trump asserted that one should get a Nobel Prize for “every war you stopped. These were major wars. These were wars that nobody thought could be stopped”.
Trump claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him he had been trying to stop two of the wars for ten years and wasn’t able to do it.
“He couldn’t believe it. So in theory, you should get the Nobel Prize for every war you stopped. Every one of them was major. But I don’t care about that. What I care about is saving lives. I’ve saved tens of millions of lives,” he said.
Trump was asked about Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize last year to him, and has said she wants to give the honour to him.
Trump said Machado will be coming to Washington next week and “pay her regards to our country, really to me, but you know I’m a representative of the country, nothing else, and she’s coming in sometime next week”.
He said “it’s very nice” that Machado wants to come in, “and that’s what I understand the reason is because Norway is very embarrassed by what took place. I mean, they’re getting decimated”, referring to Machado’s offer to give her Nobel Prize to him when the Oslo-based Nobel committee did not honour him last year.
“But I’m honoured that she’s coming here. I look forward to meeting her,” he said.
A day earlier, in an interview to Fox News, Trump said again that he stopped the war between India and Pakistan, the two nuclear powers “ready to go at it big”.