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About this Episode
Hosts & Guests
Transcript
January 16th, 2026.
Well, President Donald J. Trump finally has his Nobel Peace Prize.
Yesterday, in a visit to the White House, Venezuela opposition leader Maria Carino 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 once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be
revoked, shared, or transferred to others.
Asked today why he would want someone else's Nobel Prize, he answered, well, she offered
it to me.
I thought it was very nice.
He said, you know, you've ended eight wars and nobody deserves this prize more than,
in history than you do.
I thought it was a very nice gesture.
And by the way, I think she's a very fine woman and we'll be talking again.
With all its members dressed in dark blue suits and red ties, Trump's usual garb, the 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, I heard they have a little surprise.
Oh, that looks nice.
I hope it's the stick and not just the shirt.
That stick looks beautiful.
That looks beautiful.
Maybe I get both.
Who the hell knows?
I'm president.
I'll just take them.
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 8th, 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.
I'm in real estate, he told them.
I look at a corner.
I say, I got to get that store for the building that I'm building, et cetera.
You know, it's not that different.
I love maps.
And I always said, look at the size of this.
It's massive.
And that should be part of the United States.
He added, it's not different from a real estate deal.
It's just a little bit larger to put it mildly.
First note that map projections often either minimize or exaggerate the true size of Greenland.
It's 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 Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia 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, or NATO, directly attack the organization that has
underpinned the rules based international order that has helped stabilize the world
since World War II.
As NATO allies, Greenland and the United States have always cooperated on defense matters.
Indeed, the U.S. Pacific space space is operating in Greenland currently.
In an interview with New York Times reporters on January 7th, Trump explained that he wants
not simply to work with Greenland as the U.S. has done successfully for decades, but
to own it.
Ownership is very important, he told David E. Sanger.
Why is ownership important here, Sanger asked?
Because that's what I feel is psychologically needed for success, Trump answered.
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 asked, psychologically important to you or to the United States.
Trump answered, psychologically important for me.
Now maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I've been right about everything.
In a different part of the interview, Rogers asked, Trump, do you see any checks on your
power on the world stage?
Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to?
Trump answered, yeah, there is one thing, my own morality, my own mind.
It's the only thing that can stop me and that's very good.
What international law asked Zolan Kano Young's?
I don't need international law, Trump answered.
I'm not looking to hurt people.
I'm not looking to kill people.
I've ended, remember this, I've ended eight wars.
Nobody else has ever done that.
I've ended eight wars and didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize, pretty amazing.
After more discussion of his fantasy that he has ended eight wars, Kano Young's followed
up.
But do you feel your administration needs to abide by international law on the global
stage?
Yeah, I do, Trump said, you know, I do, but it depends what your definition of international
law is.
In the Atlantic National Security Scholar Tom Nichols noted that Trump's determination
to seize Greenland from Denmark, a country with which the US has been allied for more
than two centuries, is extraordinarily dangerous.
Nichols suggests that Trump might simply declare the US 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 incinerate the NATO alliance.
With that collapse, Russian President Vladimir Putin might well begin attacking other NATO
members, particularly Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which together Nichols notes are about
the size of Wisconsin.
If other NATO allies come to their aid, Europe would be at war, and US forces like it or
not would find themselves in the middle of this bedlam.
Many of the countries are nuclear powers, and the chances of a cataclysmic mistake or
miscalculation would grow greater every day.
Meanwhile, China might reach for Taiwan and South Korea and Japan would need to plan for
the end of US strategic power, likely with nuclear arms.
Trump is courting peril, Nichols' rights.
His obsessions could lead not only to the collapse of American standard of living, but
present a real danger to their lives, no matter where they live.
Nichols' concerns are not isolated.
They echo those of Danish Prime Minister Metafredrickson, who warned that the US seizure of Greenland
would mean the end of NATO.
Defense Commissioner for the European Union, Andreas Kubilius, agreed.
And yet, on social media on Wednesday, Trump denied that his actions could hurt NATO.
Militarily, without the vast power of the United States, his social media account posted,
NATO would not be an effective force or deterrent.
Not even close.
They know that, and so do I.
It will become far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the United States.
Later in the day, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Luka Rasmussen, an Icelandic Foreign Minister
Vivian Motzfeld, met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance.
But the meeting left fundamental disagreements among the parties after Trump reiterated
his conviction that the US really needs Greenland.
Also on Wednesday, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden
launched Operation Arctic Endurance, increasing their military presence in Greenland in order,
as Germany's Defense Ministry said, to support Denmark in ensuring security in the region.
An attack on Greenland is wildly unpopular in the United States.
A Reuters' Ipsos poll from earlier this week found that just 17% of Americans approve
of the US efforts to acquire Greenland.
Only 4% think it's a good idea to take Greenland using military force.
When asked about that poll on Wednesday, Trump called it fake.
bipartisan groups in Congress have tried to prevent any attack on Greenland by introducing
measures that require congressional approval of such an attack, that prevent military action
against NATO members, and that prohibit the use of federal funds for any invasion of
a NATO member state or NATO protected territory.
Democrats are outraged about Trump's threats to undermine the entire post-World War II rules-based
international order, and they note that Americans want lower healthcare costs and cheaper
groceries, not Greenland.
Today, 11 US lawmakers, led by Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat of Delaware, are in Denmark,
where they met with Danish Prime Minister Fredrickson and Greenland's Prime Minister Jens
Frederick Nielsen.
Nine Democrats and two Republicans sought to lower the temperature by assuring Denmark
that the US would not try to seize Greenland.
Coons thanked the delegation's hosts for 225 years of being a good and trusted ally
and partner.
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told reporters that support in Congress to acquire
Greenland in any way is not there.
Her suggestion reflects the comment of Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker,
a Republican of Mississippi, after he met with the Danish envoys in Washington, D.C. on
Wednesday.
Wicker later said, I think it has been made clear from our Danish friends and our friends
in Greenland that that future does not include a negotiation for the acquisition.
Representative Don Bacon, a Republican of Nebraska, went further, telling Wolf Blitzer of CNN
that an attack on Greenland will lead to impeachment, regardless of who is in control of
Congress after the midterm elections.
You don't threaten a NATO ally.
They've been a great ally.
We've had bases on there since World War II.
Denmark has fought with us by our side in Iraq and Afghanistan, so I feel it's incumbent
on folks like me to speak up and say these threats and bullying of an ally are wrong.
And just on the weird chance he's serious about invading Greenland, I want to let him know
it will probably be the end of his presidency.
Most Republicans know this is immoral and wrong and we're going to stand up against it.
I think it would lead to impeachment.
Invading an ally is a high crime and a misdemeanor.
This from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson.
It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead and Massachusetts, recorded with music
composed by Michael Moss.
