This is turning out to be a pretty good week for Donald Trump. Even though the Republican presidential hopeful lost in Iowa to Ted Cruz, he has one thing that neither Cruz - nor any of his opponents - have: a 2016 Nobel Peace Prize nomination.
Despite his controversial call to ban all Muslims from entering the United States that sparked international outrage, Trump, who was hosting a reality TV show at this time last year, is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee due to his tough stance on terrorism and other security threats, said Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, confirming an earlier AFP report.
Harpviken couldn't reveal the names of the people who nominated Trump but said supporters wrote that the real estate mogul was deserving of the reward because of his his vigorous peace-through-strength ideology, used as a threat weapon of deterrence against radical Islam, ISIS, nuclear Iran and Communist China.
These points reference the times Trump has vowed to "bomb the s--t out of ISIS" and threatened to impose a protective tariff on trade with the Chinese during his campaign, according to CNN.
Though Trump is a surprising nomination, considering that thousands of people around the world are allowed to make nominations for the award, including parliamentary ministers, government members, former prize winners and some university professors, his presence there is not unprecedented. As a testament to the open nature of the nominations, Adolf Hitler was nominated in 1939 by a member of the Swedish parliament - albeit sarcastically. (The nomination was later thrown out).
Trump's chances of winning aren't too high however, as he isn't on Harpivken's shortlist, which is topped by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, the Greek island groups welcoming Syrian refugees, an escaped ISIS sex slave turned women's rights activist, the prime negotiators of the Iran nuclear deal and the negotiators who ended five decades of civil war in Colombia.
