President Donald Trump speaks with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the G20 Leaders' Summit in Buenos Aires, on Nov. 30, 2018. Trump said Friday that Abe nominated him for the Nobel Peach Prize. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images White House Trump says Japanese prime minister nominated him for Nobel Peace Prize

President Donald Trump claimed Friday that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to broker peace between North and South Korea.

Trump said Abe showed the president “the most beautiful five-page letter” that he sent to the Norwegian committee that awards the prestigious diplomatic prize each year.


“He had rocket ships, and he had missiles flying over Japan, and they had alarms going off, you know that,” Trump said of Abe, speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday. “Now all of a sudden, they feel good. They feel safe. I did that.”

The Japanese embassy in Washington did not immediately return an email seeking confirmation that Abe had, in fact, submitted Trump's name for the peace prize.

Trump said he would “probably would never get” the prize, but that he had thanked the Japanese prime minster.

“But that’s okay,” Trump added. “They gave it to Obama. He didn’t even know what he got it for.”

Former President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” in 2009, a year he worked to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. He was the fourth U.S. president to be honored by the Nobel committee.

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South Korean President Moon Jae-in reportedly said in May that Trump deserved the Nobel Prize for his work to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, remarks Trump called “very generous” at the time.

Trump plans to meet North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un at the end of the month for a two-day summit in Vietnam, which would be the second meeting between the president and the leader of the authoritarian regime. The two men held a historic first meeting in Singapore last June, when they discussed a framework for future negotiations, which involved a plan for North Korea to start to work toward “complete denuclearization.”

Trump said Friday that he has a “very good relationship” with Kim.

“I like him a lot, and he likes me a lot,” the president said.