In the Oval Office he said he had settled eight wars, got the hostages back, and done things nobody else has done. "I'm not bragging, I'm just telling you the facts," he said. "No president has probably ever settled any wars. I settled eight wars." He said another one is coming. He also said he was honored that last year's winner, MarÃa Corina Machado, gave him her medal and told him nobody deserved it more.
That is the point his push has created. By treating the prize as something he needs, and by saying out loud that missing it would be a "great discredit" to the committee, he has made the award feel more expensive and more valuable than a normal announcement. People are watching Friday because of him, not only because of the shortlist. He said the committee has "a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me," and that whether he gets it or not, he has done far more. On Obama he repeated his usual line: Obama got it and "didn't do anything," still does not know why, and got it right at the beginning, when he was elected.
Trump makes his Nobel case in the Oval Office.
A lot of people hear the record he is citing as real peacemaking: deals he says stopped fighting, hostages returned, and leaders in Cambodia, Israel, and Pakistan who say they nominated him. Nominations are confidential, so those names cannot be confirmed. Other people weigh the same months differently, because wars he points to are disputed by some of the parties, and the Iran conflict is still open. That split is why the comments land so hard. He is asking for a peace prize while a lot of people are still being hurt.
The forecasts still do not have him winning. Experts told Reuters they do not expect the committee to choose a sitting president in the middle of the Iran war. Betting prices put him behind the field, from short odds at some books to well under 10 percent on prediction markets, with Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms and other humanitarian names ahead of him. Those are bets, not the committee's vote. They match what he himself said: he thinks he has earned it, and he does not think they will say yes.