Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special Middle East envoy, may be in trouble. As widely reported, he has been harshly criticized on foreign policy as in-over-his-head. He is running around the world, meeting with foreign leaders and making claims that never materialize, including one about a ceasefire in Ukraine.
But Witkoff is good at one thing: He knows better than anybody else how to butter up Trump. At last week’s embarrassing three-hour Cabinet meeting — where, one by one, Cabinet secretaries took turns telling Trump how great he is — Witkoff took the cake.
“There’s only one thing I wish for,” he told Trump, “that the Nobel Committee finally gets its act together and realizes you are the single finest candidate since this award was ever talked about.”
Greater than Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Shimon Peres, Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Teddy Roosevelt? That’s a little over the top, perhaps — but it’s exactly what Donald Trump wanted to hear. In fact, nobody has been lobbying harder than Trump himself for Trump to get the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize when the winners are announced next month.
In August, Trump personally called Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg to demand he be given the prestigious award. On Aug. 19, the morning after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump told “Fox and Friends” that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize because “I’ve solved seven wars. We ended seven wars.”
As with everything else, there’s a huge gap between what Trump says and the real world. FactCheck.org reports that he played little or no role in resolving some of the disagreements he cites, most of which were not really wars and some of which are still ongoing. The war in Ukraine, which Trump promised to end on “Day One” of his second term, rages on as of day 225 — despite Trump’s recent promise of an imminent ceasefire and summit meeting with Zelensky and Vladimir Putin. And what about Gaza?
For the record, the seven wars Trump takes credit for resolving are conflicts between India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, Serbia and Kosovo, Thailand and Cambodia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Israel and Iran. Each claim is sketchy.
Border disputes between India and Pakistan, for example, have been ongoing for 75 years. On June 17, after both countries agreed to a ceasefire, Trump called India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take credit and ask Modi to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. According to Indian news accounts, Modi bristled, telling Trump the ceasefire had been negotiated directly between India and Pakistan and he had nothing to do with it.
Egypt and Ethiopia have long argued over water rights from a new dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile. But no shots have ever been fired. Trump didn’t end any war, because there wasn’t any war.
Same story with Serbia and Kosovo. In 2020, during Trump’s first term, they agreed to establish economic ties, yet tensions between the two countries remain so strong that NATO troops are stationed in Kosovo to keep peace. But again, no war and no war solved.
Fighting between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo has been going on for more than 30 years, despite several brokered peace deals, the latest of which was signed at the White House on June 27. But within weeks, violence broke out again and continues today.
Thailand and Cambodia have clashed over border lines and ownership of ancient temples for years. In July, at Trump’s urging, both countries agreed to talks, which are ongoing. But there was no war in the first place.
Also ongoing and not fully resolved are the negotiations for a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, agreed to at the White House on Aug. 8.
The one case where foreign policy experts give Trump some credit is helping end the war between Israel and Iran. It is ironic, however, that Trump’s contribution to that one was to take sides with Israel and drop a bunker-buster bomb on Iran at Israel’s request — not the strongest case for a peace prize.
Even if Trump doesn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, he’s not a total loser. On Aug. 5, Trump won Bedminster’s Men’s Senior Club Championship — his sixth golf championship of 2025. But, of course, it’s a lot easier to win the top prize when you own the club.
Bill Press is host of “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”
