What was claimed
An Associated Press news report says Donald Trump has been barred from consideration for all future Nobel Prizes.
Our verdict
This report is fake and no such decision has been taken by the Nobel Prize committee.
Fake AP report claiming Trump disqualified from Nobel Prize spreads online
We’ve spotted several social media posts claiming to show a report by the Associated Press (AP) that Donald Trump has been barred from consideration for all future Nobel prizes.
This is false—this is not a genuine AP news report, and no such decision has been made by the Nobel Prize committee.
The posts purport to show an AP release stating that the Nobel Prize committee has banned the US President from consideration for all future Nobel Prizes due to his renaming of the US Department of Defense to the Department of War, and his September 2025 speech to the UN General Assembly.
But an AP spokesperson confirmed to Full Fact that the report is not genuine, and a search on the AP’s website for this misspelt headline “NPC barrs Trump accolade” does not return any results.
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Separately, a spokesperson for the Nobel Prize committee told Reuters that the statement was fake, and that it had “never disqualified a proposed candidate”.
According to the Nobel Prize’s website, there is no public list of candidates and eligible nominees for any prize are not revealed until 50 years after the prize year. The winner of this year’s Peace Prize will be announced on Friday 10 October.
While Donald Trump did rename the US Department of Defense to the Department of War by executive order on 5 September, there is no evidence as claimed that this has barred him from all future Nobel awards.
There are further clues that the report is not genuine, for instance, it is attributed to a “Hans Zeemer” of “swisstimes.org”.
The email given for “Hans Zeemer” did not accept incoming emails when contacted by Full Fact, while a Google search for this name does not reveal results showing a credible connection to AP News.
In addition, the URL ‘swisstimes.org’ does not lead to a genuine news site.
False or misleading claims online have the potential to harm individuals, groups and democratic processes and institutions. Online claims can spread fast and far, and are difficult to contain and correct.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the report is fake and the Nobel Prize committee has not disqualified Donald Trump from all future Nobel Prizes.