What did Donald Trump do today?
He wrote a note whining about Denmark to the wrong person in the wrong country.
Trump repeated a few of the same lies about Denmark and Greenland on social media today that he has been telling for years. Specifically, he suggested that NATO (an organization he loathes and frequently becomes emotional about) had been "telling Denmark for 20 years" about the looming Russian threat.
In reality, NATO members—most especially the United States—have been closing military installations on the island precisely because they weren't needed. (The United States has a treaty right to build them back up again, but Trump doesn't seem interested in doing this, for reasons he hasn't explained.)
But today also saw reporting that Trump is mixing up his Greenland obsession with his Nobel Peace Prize obsession, in the form of a letter to Jonas Gahr Støre, the Prime Minister of Norway. Nick Schifrin, a reporter with PBS, posted the text he'd confirmed with multiple government sources today:
![NEW: @potus letter to @jonasgahrstore links @NobelPrize to Greenland, reiterates threats, and is forwarded by the NSC staff to multiple European ambassadors in Washington. I obtained the text from multiple officials:Dear Ambassador: President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]“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”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:hbpefio3f5csc44msmbgioxz/bafkreie7itpptx3xbxhpsnlaqmwk752h7pcrion5ija2apksljtax2adx4@jpeg)
There's no neutral way to put this: either Trump is suffering from an acute mental health episode, or a chronic cognitive one. Norway and Denmark are two different countries. The Norwegian government does not award the Nobel Peace Prize. And even if it did, threatening to wage war specifically out of spite for not getting a peace prize is absurd.
And most importantly, even if Trump believed Russia had designs on Greenland—and even if Trump thought that the Putin regime having its way was a bad thing—Denmark already has a robust system of defense. It is a member of NATO, whose members, including the United States, would be obliged to come to its aid if it were attacked.
Incidentally, in the 77-year history of NATO, only one country has ever invoked the portion of the charter that requires allies to come to its aid: the United States, after the September 11th attacks. As a deterrent to Soviet and later Russian aggression, it has never failed—which makes Trump attacking it from within worth far more to hostile countries like Russia than Greenland ever could be.
Why does this matter?
- It doesn't really matter whether a president is doing the bidding of hostile foreign nations out of incompetence, corruption, or any other reason.
- This is not how someone who is mentally stable and alert enough to be president behaves.