No, Trump hasn't threatened to bomb Norway

Misleading claims are circulating online that US President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Norway if he doesn’t receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Posts on X and other social media platforms like those pictured below suggest that Trump said he brought peace in the Israel-Iran war “by blowing things up”, and that he can do the same in Norway to secure the prestigious award.

The claims are sometimes shared with pictures of Trump or even footage of various explosions.

Nevertheless, a Google search for any trace of Trump ever making such remarks yields very few results.

Searching for terms like “Trump”, “Norway”, “bomb” and “Nobel Prize” doesn’t point to any official communication by the US president. There are also no reputable news reports about any such comments either, apart from other fact-checkers also debunking the claims.

The closest thing that appears is an article published on 26 June by The Borowitz Report, which carries the headline that Trump has warned he’ll attack Norway if he doesn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize.

However, the website’s About page says that it’s a satirical news site created by Andy Borowitz, a writer and comedian.

“I’ve been writing satirical news since I was eighteen,” Borowitz says in the About section. “This represents either commitment to a genre or arrested development.”

It reads that Chinese media once believed a satirical story that Borowitz published about Trump wrapping the White House’s phones in tinfoil.

Could Trump win the Nobel Peace Prize?

The US president has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize before and has repeatedly made the case that he deserves it. However, he’s never won it. Trump claims that the Nobel committee is deliberately ignoring him and is politically biased.

In June, he published on his Truth Social platform: “No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!”

Recently, Pakistan put Trump forward to receive the award for what it said was his role in resolving Islamabad’s conflict with India.

It described him as a “genuine peacemaker” in the nomination, but a day later condemned the president for violating international law after the US bombed Iranian nuclear sites.

Republican politician Buddy Carter also nominated Trump for bringing about a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign committee, meanwhile, withdrew his nomination for Trump because he said he’d “lost any sort of faith and belief” in the president’s ability to secure a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow.

Merezhko originally nominated Trump for the prize in November, soon after his victory in the 2024 US presidential election.

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is typically made up of five members appointed by the Norwegian parliament, as per the will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel.

This is unlike the other Nobel prizes, such as the prizes for literature, physics and medicine, which are handed down by different Swedish bodies depending on the award.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee shortlists nominations and consults experts before deciding on a winner for the Peace Prize. Nominations for the annual award can only come from certain recognised bodies or individuals, such as national governments, professors of law, history or religion, or past winners.

Nobel said in his will that it should go to the person who has done the most for “fraternity between nations” and the abolition of standing armies.

US presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize before. Theodore Roosevelt was the first to do so in 1906 for mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese War, followed by Woodrow Wilson in 1919 for founding the League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations).

In 2002, Jimmy Carter was awarded the prize for decades of peaceful conflict resolution, the promotion of democracy, and humanitarian work, while Barack Obama received it in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.

So, in theory, there is no bar to Trump winning the award, provided he receives a valid nomination and as long as the Norwegian Nobel Committee and its consulted experts deem his claimed contributions to peace as valid and extensive enough to warrant the prize.