President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to claim credit for a Nobel Prize in physics that was awarded for work completed decades before he even entered public office.
On Truth Social, Trump shared a quote he attributed to Energy Secretary Chris Wright — a former fracking executive — suggesting that this year’s Nobel, given for breakthroughs in quantum physics, was “by extension, an award for Trump.”
“Quantum computing, along with AI and Fusion, are the three signature Trump science efforts,” the quote reads. “Trump 47 racks up his first Nobel Prize!!”
In reality, the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics went to John Clarke (UC Berkeley), Michel H. Devoret (Yale and UC Santa Barbara), and John M. Martinis (UC Santa Barbara and Qolab), “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit,” according to the Nobel Foundation.
The work recognized by the award was done at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1984 and 1985 — decades before Trump’s first presidency began in 2017. Ironically, the same lab recently laid off 15-20% of its research staff due to federal funding cuts implemented under Trump, according to The Daily Californian.
Trump has long expressed a desire to win a Nobel, particularly the Peace Prize. He has repeatedly complained that he deserves “four or five” of them, and has openly harbored resentment toward President Barack Obama for having received one.
Critics were quick to ridicule Trump’s latest attempt to attach his name to a Nobel.
“The President of the United States is so upset about his failed campaign for a Nobel Prize that he’s now trying to claim someone else’s prize as his own,” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote, before adding: “Pathetic.”
Social media users followed suit:
User @Laurieluvsmolly wrote: “Absolutely embarrassing, even for Trump.😭”
User @obachevsky added: “This is even more incoherent than it looks. Chris Wright didn’t win a Nobel Prize. He is the current Energy Secretary. Trump is quoting Wright because Wright gave Trump credit for the Nobel Prizes won by three physicists for work done decades ago.”
Read Trump’s post and more reactions below:
