Trump is embarrassing us. Even Republicans don’t want Greenland. | Opinion

When I first saw a note from President Donald Trump to the prime minister of Norway popping up on social media, I thought it was fake. I’ve written about this loon of a politician for more than a decade, but surely this ornery, whining communiqué to a world leader – with Trump venting over not receiving a Nobel Peace Prize while threatening to take Greenland by any means necessary – was a prank.

Alas, it’s real. Fool me a thousand times, shame on me, I suppose.

It’s vitally important for Americans to recognize how unhinged Trump has become, so here is the full, unedited text to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre:

“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.”

That embarrassing and geopolitically troubling text stands as a reminder that Republican lawmakers are doing nothing – absolutely nothing – to restrain a man behaving increasingly like a mad king threatening to unravel the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the world order while turning our allies against us.

And they’re doing nothing despite the fact that, according to recent polling, voters strongly oppose acquiring Greenland. A recent Quinnipiac poll found nearly 90% of Americans are against taking the island by military force.

As far as the facts in Trump’s missive, there aren’t many.

For starters, the Nobel Peace Prize isn’t a governmental award. The winner is chosen by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Trump has not stopped “8 Wars PLUS,” and his random capitalizations should worry us all.

Peter Viggo Jakobsen, an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defense College, told Sky News that the idea of protecting Greenland from Russia and China is absurd: “There is no acute problem to solve – the Chinese and Russian ships that he keeps talking about are a figment of his imagination.”

The claim that “there are no written documents” regarding Denmark’s right to Greenland is nonsense. A 1916 treaty between Denmark and the United States said the U.S. government “will not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland.”

But beyond the fictional world Trump inhabits and his belief that the rules of writing don’t apply to him, consider the utter childishness of that text message. Trump didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize, so now he claims, “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”

Good lord, man, you’re president of the United States of America, and you sound like a toddler crying because he didn’t win a dodgeball game.

Even after Trump accepted Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize on Jan. 15 – something I thought would hold for at least a week as the most embarrassing moment in American political history – his narcissism wasn’t satisfied. If they don’t give Trump his toy, he’s going to have a tantrum and stomp all over Greenland and the West’s collective security.

It has been said before, but I’ll repeat it: We don’t have to live like this. If even a handful of Republicans dropped their naked opportunism and sprouted spines, they could restrain a man clearly and dangerously spiraling. They could make him feel some political backlash, perhaps put a muzzle on this rabid dog.

In the past, it has seemed histrionic to say Trump is an existential threat to America and the world. With our NATO allies making clear they will defend Greenland and sending troops to conduct military exercises on the island, and with China and Russia drooling at the idea of NATO collapsing, that existential threat is profoundly real.

Trump is and always has been a self-serving fool with nary an oar in the river of reality. If he lands us in a war over his Nobel Peace Prize obsession, it won’t be entirely his fault. The lapdog Republicans who saw these warning signs, read that insane text message to Norway’s prime minister, ignored the will of the American people and decided to let the madman behind the wheel drive us all off a cliff will hold much of the blame.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.