Republican lawmakers nominate Trump for Nobel Peace Prize

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President Donald Trump

• A group of Republican members of Congress on Wednesday nominated President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on North Korea's nuclear program. 
• Republican Rep. Luke Messer of Indiana sent a letter to the Nobel Prize Committee formally nominating the president, stating Trump was bringing peace to the Korean Peninsula via his "peace through strength policies."
• If Trump were to win the Nobel Peace Prize, he would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

A group of Republican members of Congress on Wednesday nominated President Donald Trump for his efforts on North Korea's nuclear program. 

Republican Rep. Luke Messer of Indiana sent a letter to the Nobel Prize Committee formally nominating the president, stating Trump was bringing peace to the Korean Peninsula via his "peace through strength policies." The letter was signed by 17 of Messer's Republican colleagues. 

"Since taking office, President Trump has worked tirelessly to apply maximum pressure on North Korea to end its illlicit weapons programs and bring peace to the region," Messer wrote in the letter. "We can think of no one more deserving of the Committee's recognition in 2019 than President Trump for his tireless work to bring peace to our world."

Messer's letter cited Trump's efforts to unite the international community, including China, in imposing harsh economic sanctions against North Korea to pressure it to cease long-range missile and nuclear testing. It also referenced the fact South Korean President Moon Jae-in also recently suggested Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. 

'Since taking office, President Trump has worked tirelessly to apply maximum pressure on North Korea'

In late April, North Korea agreed to cease long-range missile and nuclear testing. It also announced it would close its primary nuclear test site. 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un also recently held a historic summit with Moon as a sign of the warming relations between the two historic enemies. During the summit, the two leaders pledged to work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and announced they would pursue a treaty to formally end the Korean War, which has technically been ongoing since the fighting stopped via an armistice in 1953. 

Kim's regime has not yet said what it will do about its existing nuclear arsenal, and some have dismissed the significance of it agreeing to cease nuclear testing given its primary test site is widely considered unusable.

Trump is set to hold a meeting with Kim to discuss North Korea's nuclear program in the near future, the location and date of which of not yet been announced.

The meeting is highly anticipated for myriad reasons, including the fact Trump and Kim were engaged in a heated war of words only a few months ago. The two world leaders frequently traded insults and threats from across the globe in 2017, making a drastic shift in their rhetoric and overall disposition in 2018. 

If Trump were to win the Nobel Peace Prize, he would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama. Obama won the prize in 2009 for his "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." Some felt the award was given to Obama prematurely and the decision was not met without criticism, a fact the former president addressed in his Nobel Lecture. 

"I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility," Obama said at the time. "And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage."