The former chief Democratic rival of President Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, said she would nominate the president for the Nobel Peace Prize if he were able to end the Ukraine war.
Trump is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday. Expectations vary for the summit, but Trump is expected to seek peace between Ukraine and Russia or at least a second meeting involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Clinton appeared to look past her disdain for Trump to allow herself the opportunity to hope the president brokers peace in the yearslong war.
“If he could end [the war] without putting Ukraine in a position where it had to concede its territory to the aggressor … could really stand up to Putin, something we haven’t seen, but maybe this is the opportunity … If President Trump were the architect of that, I’d nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize,” Clinton said.
“Because my goal here is to not allow capitulation to Putin,” she added.
The former Secretary of State did note that she’d want Trump to broker peace between the nations without Ukraine giving up territory, something Russia would want in a peace deal. The Trump administration had seemed willing to give in to Russia’s demands for Ukrainian land in the past, but Zelensky drew a hard line at allowing any land to permanently fall into Russian hands.
Clinton noted previously in the podcast where she gave her remarks that Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize. The president has made his desire to receive the prize known, and has often complained that he won’t receive it no matter how many conflicts he helps to end.
“The president feels that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, but does not think he will get it,” a White House official told NBC News. “He has remarked that it will go to someone who writes a book about how Donald Trump thinks rather than Donald Trump himself.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made the case for Trump to receive the prize last month, saying the president has “brokered, on average, about one peace deal or ceasefire per month during his six months in office. It’s well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Trump previously touted deals between Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, along with Cambodia and Thailand as landmark agreements he helped forge.
But a Russia-Ukraine peace deal would be one of Trump’s best shots to receive the award. The war has been the bloodiest within Europe in decades, and has worried other Europeans that Russia will triumph and substantially grow its influence in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Trump and Putin will meet on Friday afternoon at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a key military base that countered the former Soviet Union. The president said there will be “very severe consequences” if Putin does not agree to a ceasefire, but noted that the second meeting would be more important.
“We’re going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelenskyy, myself, and maybe we’ll bring some of the European leaders — maybe not … It’s going to be very important,” he said.
“We’re going to see what happens,” Trump continued. “And I think President Putin will make peace.”
BOLTON DISMISSES TRUMP RECORD AS PRESIDENT WANTING NOBEL PEACE PRIZE ‘MORE THAN ANYTHING’
The president predicts the meeting with Putin has a 25% chance of failing outright.
If the president succeeds and secures a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia without land concessions, Clinton could have a potentially awkward award nomination to give out. It’d be one of several Nobel Peace Prize nominations the president has received, but likely the most notable.
