In late September 2025, social media posts claimed the Nobel Prize Committee announced that U.S. President Donald Trump was permanently disqualified from receiving future awards due to recent remarks to the United Nations General Assembly and his effort to rebrand the Department of Defense as the "Department of War."
In a post (archived) on Sept. 25, one X user wrote, "BREAKING NEWS: Nobel Prize committee announces that @realDonaldTrump has been permanently disqualified from all future awards due to his renaming US Defense Dept 'Department of War.'"
The post featured an image of a purported press release by The Associated Press titled, "NPC BARRS TRUMP ACCOLADE." It read, in part:
In an unprecedented move that has world leader [sic] 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 U.S. Department of Defense as the "Department of War," which the committee deemed a "grave breach of historical gravitas and semantic decorum."
(@TheAmericaStore on X)
The claim circulated elsewhere on X and on Facebook (archived here and here). Multiple Snopes readers emailed us and searched our website to verify whether it was true.
The rumor referenced remarks by Trump to the U.N. General Assembly in late September 2025; Trump said the international body was "not even coming close to living up to" its potential. The claim also referred to a genuine, Trump-sponsored executive order that aims to rebrand the Department of Defense as the "Department of War."
However, the rumor was false. It originated with an X (archived) account that shares parody content, @TheAmericaStore. That profile's bio reads, in part (emphasis ours): "Pokes fun at Politics & Life in the USA (parody site, duh)." The user also acknowledged in multiple replies that the claim was false and they had "made it up."
A search of The Associated Press website turned up no press release related to the alleged announcement. An AP spokesperson also confirmed via email that "this is not an AP story."
Furthermore, a spokesperson for The Norwegian Nobel Institute, which supports the Nobel Committee in its review of nominations and candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize, also confirmed via email that the announcement was fake. The spokesperson
Other red flags pointed to the supposed press release being fake. For example, its title misspelled "bars" as "barrs." The first sentence also included a grammatical error: "world leader praising" instead of "world leaders praising."
Supporters of Trump in the United States and abroad have nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize on several occasions in the past.
The government of Pakistan said in a June 2025 X post that it had nominated Trump. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet also publicly endorsed Trump for the award in July and August 2025, respectively. Additionally, U.S. Republican members of the Congress, including Reps. Buddy Carter of Georgia, Darrell Issa of California and Claudia Tenney of New York, each released statements in 2024 and 2025 about submitting nominations for Trump.
For further reading, here are eight rumors we've fact-checked over the years about Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.