Letters from an American ā January 16, 2026 ā Heather Cox Richardson
Letters from an American, January 16, 2026
By Heather Cox Richardson, Jan 17, 2026
Well, President Donald J. Trump finally has his Nobel Peace Prize. Yesterday, in a visit to the White House, Venezuela opposition leader MarĆa Corina Machado presented Trump with the Nobel Peace Prize medal the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded to her in October 2025. Although the medal commemorating the prize can change hands, the committee and the Norwegian Nobel Institute have made it clear that ā[o]nce a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, shared, or transferred to others.ā
Asked today why he would want someone elseās Nobel Prize, he answered: āWell, she offered it to me. I thought it was very nice. She said, āYou know, youāve ended eight wars and nobody deserves this prize more thanāin historyāthan you do.ā I thought it was a very nice gesture. And by the way, I think sheās a very fine woman, and weāll be talking again.ā
With all its members dressed in dark blue suits and red tiesāTrumpās usual garbāthe Florida Panthers hockey team presented Trump yesterday with a jersey bearing his name and the number 47, two championship rings, and a golden hockey stick. At the ceremony, Trump looked over at the gifts laid out beside the podium at which he was speaking, and told the audience: āI heard they have a little surprise. Ooh, that looks nice. I hope itās the stick and not just the shirt. That stick looks beautiful. That looks beautiful. Maybe I get both, who the hell knows. Iām president, Iāll just take āem.ā
And then, of course, Trump says he wants Greenland, a resource-rich autonomous island that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. In a January 8, 2026, piece in the New Yorker, Susan Glasser noted that Trump dumbfounded his advisors in 2018 by suggesting a trade of Puerto Rico for Greenland and, in the fall of 2021, told Glasser and her husband, journalist Peter Baker, that he wanted Greenland as a piece of real estate.
āIām in real estate,ā he told them. āI look at a corner, I say, āI gotta get that store for the building that Iām building,ā et cetera. You know, itās not that different. I love maps. And I always said, āLook at the size of this, itās massive, and that should be part of the United States.ā ā He added, āItās not different from a real-estate deal. Itās just a little bit larger, to put it mildly.ā (Observers note that map projections often either minimize or exaggerate the true size of Greenland: itās about three times the size of Texas.)
Trump announced his designs on Greenland as soon as he took office the second time, but talk about it quieted down until the administration attacked Venezuela and successfully extracted Venezuelan president NicolƔs Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Then Trump turned back to his earlier demands.
Those threats against Greenland and therefore Denmark, a founding member of the defensive North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), directly attack the organization that has underpinned the rules-based international order that has helped to stabilize the world since World War II. As NATO allies, Greenland and the United States have always cooperated on defense mattersāindeed, the U.S. Pituffik Space Base is operating in Greenland currently.
In an interview with New York Times reporters on January 7, Trump explained that he wants not simply to work with Greenland, as the U.S. has done successfully for decades, but to own it. āOwnership is very important,ā he told David E. Sanger.
āWhy is ownership important here?ā Sanger asked.
āBecause thatās what I feel is psychologically needed for success,ā Trump answered. āI think that ownership gives you a thing that you canāt do, whether youāre talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you canāt get from just signing a document, that you can have a base.ā
Katie Rogers asked: āPsychologically important to you or to the United States?ā
Trump answered: āPsychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far Iāve been right about everything.ā
In a different part of the interview, Rogers asked Trump: āDo you see any checks on your power on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to?ā Trump answered: āYeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. Itās the only thing that can stop me, and thatās very good.ā
āNot international law?ā asked Zolan Kanno-Youngs. āI donāt need international law,ā Trump answered. āIām not looking to hurt people. Iām not looking to kill people. Iāve endedāremember this, Iāve ended eight wars. Nobody else has ever done that. Iāve ended eight wars and didnāt get the Nobel Peace Prize. Pretty amazing.ā After more discussion of his fantasy that he has ended eight wars,ā Kanno-Youngs followed up: āBut do you feel your administration needs to abide by international law on the global stage?ā
āYeah, I do,ā Trump said. āYou know, I do, but it depends what your definition of international law is.ā
In The Atlantic, national security scholar Tom Nichols noted that Trumpās determination to seize Greenland from Denmark, a country with which the U.S. has been allied for more than two centuries, is āextraordinarily dangerous.ā Nichols suggests that Trump might simply declare the U.S. owns Greenland and then dare anyone to disagree (much as he declared he won the 2020 presidential election). That could create a disastrous series of events that would āincinerate the NATO alliance.ā
Continue/Read Original Article Here: January 16, 2026 ā by Heather Cox Richardson
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