President Donald Trump has been repeating one of his favorite boasts since taking office in January — that he has personally ended multiple global conflicts — and he’s been doing it with an eye on something bigger: a Nobel Peace Prize.
With the prize announcement expected next month, Trump has worked the line into speeches and interviews and insists his leadership deserves recognition on the world stage.
“I stopped seven wars, and they were, they’re big ones too,” Trump said in August, before adding that “a lot of people say seven because there’s one that nobody knows about.”
But despite being fact-checked over and over, Trump can’t seem to help himself. At a speech Tuesday before the nation’s top military brass at Quantico, he once again brought up his supposed record of peace deals — only this time, the number had grown again. “To have done eight of them is just such an honor,” he boasted.
That’s when the story really started to unravel. Not only did Trump suddenly add an eighth conflict “that nobody knows about” to the tally, but in a real headscratcher of a moment, he went on to brag about settling the conflict between Azerbaijan and another country that he couldn’t remember.
“And I said, ‘That’s so nice, and you’re going to remain friends.’ And I spoke to them, one of them the other day, he said, ‘No, he’s now my friend,’ but for 22 years, he’s been the head of Azerbaijan, for 22 years. And the other guy, great guy, too, seven.”
The missing country, of course, was Armenia — a detail Trump has repeatedly bungled in past interviews, once confusing it entirely with Albania. And this was all playing out before the military’s top brass.
That slip only makes it easier for more brutal fact checks from late-night comedian Seth Meyers who just last week rolled the tape on Trump’s contradictions, mispronunciations, and flat-out fabrications. He hammered the president with comedic timing and even maps showing the countries he can’t seem to keep straight. And it sent the audience into stitches.
“I solved wars that was unsolvable. Uh, Azerbaijan and Albania,” Trump said in a Sept. 12 “Fox & Friends” clip that was the first of a medley Meyers posted.
“You saw the Aber-by-jahn. That was a big one going on for 34, 35 years, with, uh, Albania,” Trump crowed on Aug. 19 on the “Mark Levin Show” while mispronouncing Azerbaijan in the second clip Meyers posted.
Meyers didn’t miss a beat. “It was never going to be settled because it never existed. There has never been a conflict between Azerbaijan and Albania. I mean, look how far apart they are,” the comedian joked while showing a map displaying the striking distance between the two countries.
“Here’s what happened. Trump keeps confusing Albania with Armenia because they both start with A and no one on his staff is correcting him, even when he gets it right,” Meyers laughed.
“What a moron. The fact that Trump sits at that level of government is the complete and total humiliation of a nation,” said one viewer in response to Meyers’ clip.
“Donald J. Trump is literally the most embarrassing person this country has ever produced,” added another.
“Is Trump Ok,” asked another.
And more importantly, even when Trump does get it right, the facts are still wrong. Trump did not resolve the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He brokered a major agreement between the two countries which led to a historic peace deal, but the conflict is not over, and the deal has not been ratified or implemented.
Despite the White House’s insistance, foreign policy experts say that while Trump has played a role in ceasefires, most of the conflicts remain unresolved — and some were never full-scale wars to begin with.
Although there is a framework for a peace deal, the fighting between Israel and Hamas rages on.
Trump also contends he ended the fight between Israel and Iran; the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda; Cambodia and Thailand; India and Pakistan; Serbia and Kosovo; Egypt and Ethiopia; and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Foreign policy experts said Trump deserves some credit for recent peace agreements in several conflicts. They cited conflicts between Cambodia and Thailand, Israel and Iran, and India and Pakistan, although India disputes Trump’s involvement, PolitiFact reported.
But the peace agreement between the DRC and Rwanda is temporary and shaky. There is no deal between Egypt and Ethiopia in their dispute, which is disagreement over a dam and water from the Nile, not a military conflict. And there’s no evidence that Trump was involved with Kosovo and Serbia or that the two nations were even about to engage in a conflict.
