Fox News is reporting that a statement is imminent from the White House announcing that President Trump will sit down with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un over denuclearization negotiates. Already the fifth-ranking House Republican is calling for the president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
“If North Korea talks lead to concrete action, President Trump should be well on his way to his own Nobel Peace Prize. North Korea is signaling for the first time a willingness to discuss disarming its nuclear capabilities,” Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., said early Thursday morning.
That nomination comes in the midst of international pressure against the North Korean regime and coincidentally as Messer runs for U.S. Senate in a state where Trump easily won the Republican primary in 2016.
“Meaningful talks would be more progress than we saw during the entire Obama Administration,” Messer wrote in a statement posted on his congressional website. “President Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for being a charming presidential candidate. If North Korea disarms, President Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize would be well deserved.”
Cynical analysis says that Messer wants to ride on the international coattails of the White House, perhaps even warming up personally to the president during a contentious three-way Senate primary in the process. That can’t hurt in a state Trump carried by double digits. Still there is something serious to what Messer is suggesting: Trump would deserve acknowledgement, were he to secure any real and lasting concessions.
Conventional foreign policy wisdom has always been that North Korea is an irrational actor. And at times the president has rattled his own nuclear saber on Twitter too freely. But if he somehow this manages to defang a rogue nuclear threat, then Messer is right — Trump would deserve what he might call an especially big and beautiful prize.
