Donald Trump. Steve Pope/Getty Images Monday was not a good day for Donald Trump. His infamous phrase ‘loser’ came back to haunt him when he was forced to admit defeat to rival Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucus after weeks of being billed as the Republican frontrunner.

But on Tuesday, it emerged that Trump’s name had reportedly made it on to a list of nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize — alongside figures such as Pope Francis and a campaigner for Isis rape survivors.

Trump's reported nomination comes after he made a number of inflammatory and divisive comments in the run-up to the caucus. The billionaire business magnate "endeared himself to millions by proposing Muslims be banned from entering the US and has been condemned for his comments about immigration and Mexican migrants, with one of his most infamous pledges being to build a 'big beautiful wall'" between the US and Mexico.

Kristian Berg Harpviken, a Nobel watcher and head of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, told Reuters the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has also been tipped for an award, alongside Colombian peace negotiators, US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation.

He also a claimed to have seen a letter submitted by an unidentified US nominator who proposed Trump for “his vigorous peace through strength ideology, used as a threat weapon of deterrence against radical Islam, Isis, nuclear Iran and Communist China”. He did not list Trump as one of the candidates who actually has a chance of winning.

Thousands of people are eligible to submit nominations for the Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel committee typically receives more than 200 nominations, according to the Associated Press.