European leaders were seen sharing a laugh over Donald Trump’s tendency to mix up the parties in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict he claims to have ended.
“You should make an apology … to us because you didn’t congratulate us on the peace deal that President Trump made between Albania and Azerbaijan,” Albanian prime minister Edi Rama told French president Emmanuel Macron on Thursday during a meeting of the European Political Community, as Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev looked on.
“I am sorry for that,” Macron responded, clapping Rama on the face with a smile.
The Albanian leader then added of Trump, “He worked very hard.”
The banter was a reference to President Trump’s repeated mix-ups when discussing the hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan, nations that announced a U.S.-brokered agreement in August aimed at diffusing long-running military tensions.
During an appearance last month on Fox News, Trump claimed he had solved the “unsolvable” war between Azerbaijan and Albania. That same month, he called the nation “Aberbaijan” during a press conference.
President Trump has repeatedly claimed he’s solved at least seven wars and has publicly angled for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I have settled so many wars since we’re here,” Trump told generals earlier this week, pointing to his proposed 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza. “We’re here almost nine months and I’ve settled seven and yesterday we might have settled the biggest of them all.”
“I have ended seven unendable wars,” Trump told the UN General Assembly last month. “They said they were unendable. You’re never going to get them solved. Some were going for 31 years. … I ended seven wars, and in all cases, they were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed.”
The president has claimed credit for ending conflicts in Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
As observers have noted, this tally has some holes, including the fact that Kosovo and Serbia are not at war, and other conflicts mentioned by the president remain technically ongoing.
“Brokering an agreement is a first and important step in ending wars, but it is also just the start of a process that needs follow-through,” Ken Schultz, a Stanford University political scientist, told PolitiFact. “The Armenia-Azerbaijan accord still needs to be implemented. India and Pakistan have had many ceasefires in their decades-long conflict. It will take time, and a commitment to follow through by the United States, before we know if history will see these deals as having ended wars.”
India has also pushed back against Trump’s claim that he ended a recent outbreak of conflict with Pakistan, saying instead the dispute was solved between the two countries directly without outside mediation.
