By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
President Trump, to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre:
“Dear Jonas: Considering your
Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars
PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will
always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the
United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or
China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written
documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had
boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person
since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States.
The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.
Thank you! President DJT”
The Norwegian prime minister posted, “I can confirm that
this is a text message that I received yesterday afternoon from President
Trump. It came in response to a short text message from me to President Trump
sent earlier on the same day, on behalf of myself and the President of Finland
Alexander Stubb.”
Oh, where to begin? The president’s diatribe is unhinged,
false, or bonkers in at least ten ways.
One: The Norwegian government does not award the Nobel
Peace Prize; the Nobel committee does; its members are appointed by the Norwegian parliament; current members of
the Norwegian government or parliament are barred
from serving on the committee.
Two: The nomination deadline for the 2025 Nobel Peace
Prize was January 31, 2025. Even if you think Trump’s accomplishments
in his first year warrant him receiving a Nobel Peace Prize, he had only been
in office for eleven days when the nomination deadline passed. (Yes, Barack
Obama was named the winner in 2009, in a move that was widely seen as an
embarrassment for everyone involved. Then–White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel chewed out the Norwegian ambassador over it.)
Three: Trump has not “stopped 8 wars plus.” Let’s give him credit for Israel and Hamas, and Israel and Iran.
Everything else is an exaggeration, either about the intensity of the conflict
or the U.S. role in ameliorating it. Trump’s persistent boast that he ended the
shooting war between India and Pakistan is a serious, and entirely unnecessary, irritant to the Indian
government.
Four: When Trump writes, “Denmark cannot protect that
land from Russia or China,” that country won’t have to protect Greenland alone,
so long as Denmark is a member of NATO. If Russia or China were to attack
Greenland, the United States would be treaty-bound to help defend it and repel
the invaders.
Five: Despite what the president claims, there are indeed
written documents affirming Danish sovereignty over Greenland.
In 1916, the U.S. government formally recognized
Greenland as Danish territory, stating, “The undersigned Secretary of State of the United
States of America, duly authorized by his Government, has the honor to declare
that the Government of the United States of America will not object to the
Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole
of Greenland.”
A 1951 pact between the countries on the mutual defense
of Greenland stated, “The Government of the United States of America and
the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark, in order to promote stability and
well-being in the North Atlantic Treaty area by uniting their efforts for
collective defense and for the preservation of peace and security and for the
development of their collective capacity to resist armed attack, will each take
such measures as are necessary or appropriate to carry out expeditiously their
respective and joint responsibilities in Greenland.”
In 1954, the United Nations recognized and
declared, “Greenland freely decided on its integration within the Kingdom
of Denmark on an equal constitutional and administrative basis with the other
parts of Denmark.”
The Danes have been on Greenland since 1721.
Six: When Trump says, “we had boats landing there, also”
. . . who is the “we” in that sentence? Trump’s ancestors in Germany and
Scotland?
Keep in mind, the United States didn’t declare its
independence, and thus its existence as a sovereign state, until 55 years after
Danes arrived in Greenland.
Seven: Trump can claim he’s “done more for NATO than any
other person since its founding,” but former secretary of state Dean Acheson; West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer; former British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher; and former U.S. Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan could not be reached for comment. Heck, you
could argue Bill Clinton did more to shape NATO, with the invitations
to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to join the alliance.
Not only has Trump not done more for NATO than anyone
else in history, but he’s also currently the most likely threat to its
continued unity.
Eight: Trump demands, “NATO should do something for the
United States.”
The only time NATO has invoked Article Five in its
75-year history was after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, when all 18 members (at
that time) pledged to support the U.S. response to al-Qaeda and that Taliban.
At the new NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, a memorial composed of
a piece of mangled steel from the 107th floor of the World Trade Center’s North
Tower sits atop a pedestal.
In the long occupation of Afghanistan, the United Kingdom
lost 457 service members; Canada lost 159; France lost 90; Germany lost 62;
Italy lost 53; Poland lost 44; Denmark lost 43; Spain lost 35; Romania lost 27;
the Netherlands lost 25; Turkey lost 15; the Czech Republic lost 14; Norway lost
ten; Estonia lost nine; Hungary lost seven; Sweden lost five; Latvia lost four;
Slovakia lost three; Finland and Portugal lost two each; and Belgium, Bulgaria,
Croatia, Lithuania, and Montenegro lost one each.
In
the war in Iraq, the United Kingdom lost 179 service members, Italy lost
33, Poland lost 30, Bulgaria lost 13, Spain lost 11, Denmark lost seven,
Slovakia lost four, Latvia lost three, Estonia and the Netherlands lost two
each, and the Czech Republic and Hungary each lost one.
(By the way, the U.S. ally that suffered the fourth-most
casualties in Iraq? Ukraine. But hey, just because those guys stood with us
when we asked for help doesn’t mean we have to help them out, right?)
There are many depressing facets of the president’s
tirade, but one of the biggest is that these casualties, and the efforts of our
longtime allies over seven and a half decades, probably never crossed the
president’s mind.
Nine: Trump contends, “The World is not secure unless we
have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”
As many have observed, up until Trump took office, the
U.S. and Denmark largely agreed on their roles protecting the island. I hate to
disrupt a good controversy with facts, but the U.S. already plays a significant role in the national
defense and economy of Greenland. The island is the location of the
Pentagon’s northernmost installation, Pituffik Space Base (pronounced
“bee-doo-FEEK”), formerly known as Thule Air Base.
Ten: Trump sounds like an angry toddler throwing a
tantrum; in his recent interview with the New York Times, Trump emphasized that his priority is
to own Greenland because of his feelings, and ownership is “what I feel is
psychologically needed for success”:
David E. Sanger: In Greenland,
we had START. In the 1951 agreement, though, it says the United States can
reopen these bases anytime you want. You can send as many troops as you want.
President Trump: That’s
right.
Sanger: And you haven’t done
it. How come?
Trump: Because I want to
do it properly.
Sanger: And properly
means own it?
Trump: Really it is, to
me, it’s ownership. Ownership is very important.
Sanger: Why is
ownership important here?
Trump: Because that’s what
I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you
a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty.
Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a
document, that you can have a base.
Katie Rogers: Psychologically
important to you or to the United States?
Trump: Psychologically
important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so
far I’ve been right about everything.
Remember, if you object to a 79-year-old American
president threatening war against a longtime NATO ally, and explicitly saying
it was because he wasn’t given a Nobel Peace Prize, there are Americans who
will insist that your objection is a sign of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
There is indeed derangement going on around here, but not
from the sources these folks claim.
Trump may well order some sort of military operation to
seize Greenland, he may not. But ask yourself, what sorts of outcomes are
likely when the president has so little control over his temper and emotional
incontinence that he explicitly states that he wants “Complete and Total
Control of Greenland” because he didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize, in a text to
foreign leaders?
I am again reminded of a line of dialogue from The Dark
Knight: “What exactly did you think they were gonna do?”
How exactly do you expect good outcomes to be generated
by a president who is so erratic, unhinged, ill-informed, and irrational?
In a saner, better world, Trump cabinet officials would
be turning to each other and discussing invoking the 25th Amendment, which states:
Whenever the Vice President and a
majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of
such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro
tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their
written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and
duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers
and duties of the office as Acting President.
Oh, no one in the current cabinet would ever dare utter
the thought. They’re all Trump loyalists, and if they can distinguish the best
interests of the country from their own personal ambitions and access to power,
they’re hiding that ability well.
No one seriously discussed invoking the 25th Amendment
with former President Joe Biden, either, even though he couldn’t remember the names of longtime aides; Tony Blinken had to remind the president why he was meeting
with a foreign leader; Biden didn’t recognize DNC chairman Jaime Harrison
in meetings; Virginia Senator Mark Warner ended a phone call with Biden
concluding that the president had no idea what was going on in his own
counterterrorism policy; a cabinet secretary described Biden as “disoriented”
and “out of it,” mouth agape in a 2023 meeting; and Biden forgot the name of
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and referred to him as “the black man” in an interview with BET.
After one president who went senile in office and another
who is nuttier than a Payday candy bar, we can only conclude that the 25th
Amendment of the Constitution is just there for decoration.
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