https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-19-2026
"Late last night, Nick Schifrin of
PBS NewsHour posted on social media that
the staff of the U.S. National Security Council had sent to European
ambassadors in Washington a message that President Donald J. Trump had already
sent to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of Norway. The message read:
“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”
Faisal Islam of the
BBC voiced the incredulity rippling across social media
in the wake of Schifrin’s post, writing: “Even by the standards of the past
week, like others, I struggle to comprehend how the below letter on
Greenland/Nobel might be real, although it appears to come from the account of
a respected
PBS journalist… this is what I meant by beyond precedent, parody
and reality….” Later, Islam confirmed on live TV that the letter was real and
posted on X: “Incredible… the story is actually not a parody.”
International affairs journalist Anne Applebaum noted in
The Atlantic the
childish grammar in the message, and pointed out—again—that the Norwegian Nobel
Committee is not the same thing as the Norwegian government, and neither of
them is Denmark, a different country. She also noted that Trump did not, in
fact, end eight wars, that Greenland has been Danish for centuries, that many
“written documents” establish Danish sovereignty there, that Trump has done
nothing for NATO, and that European NATO members increased defense spending out
of concern over Russia’s increasing threat.
This note, she writes, “should be the last straw.” It proves that “Donald Trump
now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor
history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he
really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize.” Applebaum
implored Republicans in Congress “to stop Trump from acting out his fantasy in
Greenland and doing permanent damage to American interests.” “They owe it to
the American people,” she writes, “and to the world.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
