Our Quote of the Day comes from “Never Trump” former Republican member of Congress and political commentator Adam Kinzinger on Donald Trump’s text to Norway’s Prime Minister linking his losing the Nobel Prize to his demand that Greenland needs to become part of the United States. Or else.
Trump has been fixated on the Nobel Peace Prize for years. In this message, he treats it not as an independent award granted by an international committee, but as something Norway owed him personally. And because he didn’t receive it, he claims he no longer feels bound to prioritize peace.
Peace, in Trump’s worldview, is conditional. It is transactional. It is something he offers only when sufficiently praised. When admiration is withheld, restraint is withdrawn. That is not leadership. That is emotional blackmail on a global scale.
And:
In Trump’s mind, alliances are transactional and personal. Treaties are leverage. Allies are debtors. And if they don’t show enough gratitude, the rules change.
Most chilling is how casually Trump moves from personal grievance to geopolitical threat. There is no process. No strategy. No consultation. No Congress. Just a straight line from “I didn’t get the prize I wanted” to “peace is no longer my priority.”
That is not strength. That is not realism. That is not America First.
It is grievance-driven governance, powered by ego and resentment, with nuclear consequences.
This is how strongmen talk. This is how instability begins. And this is what happens when a president confuses personal validation with national interest.
If this message doesn’t alarm you—if it doesn’t make you stop and imagine what decisions are being made privately, with higher stakes and fewer witnesses—then we have already normalized something dangerous.
The world is not made safer by leaders who treat peace as a reward for praise.
And the United States does not become stronger by demanding “complete and total control” of someone else’s land like a tantrum dressed up as strategy.
This isn’t diplomacy. It’s a warning.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.