Trump claims he won non-existent ‘Bay of Pigs’ award - and says Biden won Nobel Peace Prize

As the battle for the presidency rages on, Donald Trump has claimed he received a “highly-honoured Bay of Pigs Award” from Cuban Americans in an attack on his rival’s alleged poor track record with Latin Americans on Sunday.

The president also confused Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for former president Barack Obama when boasting about his Nobel Peace Prize nominations during a campaign rally.

In a tweet on Sunday, following reports that Vermont democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders has “concerns” about Mr Biden’s campaign, Mr Trump said: “Sleepy Joe Biden has spent 47 years in politics being terrible to Hispanics.

“Now he is relying on Castro lover Bernie Sanders to help him out. That won’t work!

“Remember, Miami Cubans gave me the highly honoured Bay of Pigs Award for all I have done for our great Cuban Population!”

But as it turns out, there is no such award as a Bay of Pigs Award, as many on the social media platform pointed out and mocked the president for.

The Bay of Pigs invasion was a failed landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961, carried out by Cuban exiles trying to overthrow Fidel Castro. The operation was sponsored by the CIA and its failure continues to plague US-Cuban relations.

The Obama administration sought to improve relations and he became the first US president to visit Havana in nearly a century in 2016. But Mr Trump reversed his predecessor’s efforts to foster relations with Cuba, rolling back its “people-to-people” educational travel permits and prohibiting cruise ships from calling into the island.

Mr Trump previously visited a Bay of Pigs museum in Little Havana, in Miami, in October 2016. During the visit, he received a “hand-painted Brigade 2506 shield”, which is the “award” in question, his campaign has insisted. Brigade 2506 is the unit which carried out the failed invasion.

The Bay of Pigs Veterans Association gave Mr Trump an endorsement in 2016, the first ever from the group of Florida-based veterans – but no award comes with it.

Having been nominated for a second Nobel Peace Prize, Mr Trump also took the opportunity to brag about his nominations and criticise the “fake news media” again for not applauding him highly enough.

Speaking to a cheering crowd during a rally in Henderson, Nevada, on Sunday, he said: “They nominated your president twice last week, for two different subjects, for a Nobel prize – but the fake news media didn’t cover it.”

He then continues to say that Mr Biden “got it”, before pausing and correcting himself, adding: “Remember when our great president Barack Hussein Obama, he got it.”

Mr Biden has never received a Nobel Peace Prize, but he has been endorsed by 81 American winners of the prize in the fields of chemistry, medicine and physics for his support for science.

Mr Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people”, as well as his promotion of nuclear nonproliferation.

Last week, a right-wing Norwegian politician told Fox News he nominated Mr Trump for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in brokering a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Christian Tybring-Gjedde said he believed Mr Trump “has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees”.

Days later, Magnus Jacobsson, a member of the Swedish Parliament, announced he nominated the president’s administration alongside the governments of Kosovo and Serbia for brokering a peace deal between the two European nations.

Under Nobel Peace Prize rules, any member of a national parliament can nominate a candidate for the award, among others, including university professors.