Fact Check: Has Trump been permanently disqualified from winning a Nobel Prize?

WASHINGTON, DC: A rumor has been going around that President Donald Trump got permanently disqualified from ever winning a Nobel Prize.

The chaos started with what looked like an Associated Press bombshell dated September 25, 2025.

Context of the claim

The supposed press release declared that Trump had been “permanently disqualified from future awards” by the Nobel Prize committee due to “controversial comments in his UN speech on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025,” and his supposed move to rename the US Department of Defense as the “Department of War.”

The press release even came with contact info for a mysterious “Hans Zeemer” at “swisstimes.org” and carried the headline, “NPC BARRS TRUMP ACCOLADE.”

The announcement reads, “STOCKHOLM (AP) — In an unprecedented move that has world leader praising the prestigious organization, the Nobel Prize committee announced today that Donald J Trump is permanently disqualified from future awards after his controversial comments in his UN speech on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025 as well as his decision to rename the US Department of Defense as the ‘Department of War,’ which the committee deemed a ‘grave breach of historical gravitas and semantic decorum.’”

“The committee’s terse statement, issued under embargo until now, asserted that ‘the integrity of the Nobel tradition cannot coexist with a willful rebranding of global defense institutions into instruments of infringement,’ and added that even past laurels remain untouched — but ‘moving forward, no Prizes shall be awarded.’ The decision, the committee said, is final," the supposed statement added.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s critics on social media celebrated the “announcement.”

Fact Check: False

It's worth noting that none of it is real. Trump is very much eligible for the esteemed prize.

It's true that Trump has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and never actually won one, but the AP press release making the rounds is a total fabrication.

While it nailed the look and feel of an AP wire, the details were dead giveaways. Real AP alerts don’t use editorialized language and don’t hand out random “Contact Hans Zeemer” emails to shady domains like swisstimes.org.

On top of that, the Nobel Prize committee doesn’t work like that. They don’t slap blanket bans on people for political speeches or quirky renaming of government agencies.

Nominations are open to eligible nominators and winners are picked by the specific Nobel bodies — the Norwegian Nobel Committee for Peace, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for Physics and Chemistry, and so on. Each committee works independently, and none of them dish out “permanent disqualifications.”

Furthermore, a thorough search on Google turned up zero authoritative outlets backing the claim.

Posts hyping the phony release on social media were tagged with a Community Note clarifying, “No such statement has been published by The Associated Press.”

Nobel committee's comments and Trump's obsession

Asle Toje, the deputy leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told Reuters that influence campaigns like those for Trump tend to backfire.

“Some candidates push for it really hard, and we do not like it. We are used to work in a locked room without being attempted to be influenced. It is hard enough as it is to reach an agreement among ourselves, without having more people trying to influence us," she said.

Of course, the President’s fixation on a Peace Prize is no secret. The 79-year-old has repeatedly boasted that he’s “ended or resolved” seven international conflicts since his White House comeback, although he has trouble remembering the names of the countries involved.

At times, he’s even upped the number, claiming he’s ended ten conflicts if you count what he calls “pre-wars.”

Back in June, he lamented on Truth Social that he’ll never get a Nobel Peace Prize “no matter what I do.”

That said, the real winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 10.

This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.