JANAURY 20, 2026
President Donald Trump has made it clear for months — maybe even years? — that he is uniquely motivated by a desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Maybe it’s because former President Barack Obama, a frequent Trump target, won it in 2009. Maybe it is the way Trump craves validation from those who he believes have looked down on him for years.
But it only took a 136-word text on Sunday to make clear that the peace prize is among the president’s ultimate ambitions.
Our colleagues in Brussels, Ellen Francis and Steve Hendrix, have the colorful play-by-play of a text exchange between Trump and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store.
Store, on behalf of his nation and Finland, messaged Trump to oppose the president’s new plan to acquire Greenland: Imposing tariffs against any European nation that tries to stop him.
Trump wrote back, questioning Denmark’s claim to the Arctic island — Greenland has been an autonomous Danish territory since 1953 — and then linked the proposed tariffs to his being snubbed by the Norwegian committee that awards the Nobel Prize.
“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,” Trump wrote in the text, which was first reported by PBS.
Trump has said from the start of his first administration that he deserves the prize. He has been put forward as a candidate by people seeking to get in or stay in the president’s good graces. “Everyone says I should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” he told the United Nations last year.
But this takes things a step forward and, if one takes Trump’s words at face value, represents a change in thinking: Trump now seems to suggest that his actions will no longer be guided by his desire for the prize, particularly when it comes to bringing Greenland under U.S. control.
That attitude has sparked incredible concern in Europe.
Our colleagues Ellen Francis, Kate Brady, Leo Sands and Tobi Raji reported yesterday that European Union ambassadors met in Brussels on Sunday to discuss whether it was time to retaliate against the United States following Trump’s tariff threat.
“The use of tariffs against allies is completely wrong,” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said at a news conference. “A trade war is in no one’s interests.”
In what was a notably timely conversation, our colleague David Ignatius interviewed Finnish President Alexander Stubb during a WP Studio event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and asked the Nordic leader how confident he is that tensions between Trump and the European Union over Greenland will be defused.
Stubb pointedly said he saw three options: “There’s a good scenario. There’s a bad scenario. And then there’s an ugly scenario.”
“The good scenario is that we’re able to de-escalate, find an off-ramp, and then strengthen Arctic security within the NATO context. A bad scenario is something which causes a rupture between Greenland and Denmark … which is forced in one way or another, the result of which we don’t know,” Stubb said. “And of course, the ugly scenario, which no one believes is a military takeover.”
Stubb went on to say that he and other leaders want to find a solution, but said there is a faction of people who believe Trump’s focus on Greenland represents “a tipping point” and it was time for “hard pushback” and “retaliatory measures” on the United States.
Our colleagues Cat Zakrzewski and Emily Davies, in Davos for Trump’s visit this week, report that the administration is “seeking to dominate this year’s World Economic Forum by sending its largest and most senior delegation in history,” even as it is unclear whether tensions with Europe can be eased.
Even by Trump’s standards, the rising tensions present a complicated situation: He has now created a scenario that could lead to a damaging trade war between the U.S. and its closest allies, with the fate of NATO at stake. But his desire for Greenland — and his apparent, lingering frustration about his lack of a Nobel Peace Prize — appear to be such that he’s willing to risk economic stability and the NATO alliance.
What we’re watching
Is Trump preparing to make good on his threat to use the Insurrection Act to quell protests in Minneapolis?
Officials from the Department of Defense on Saturday told our colleagues, Dan Lamothe and Praveena Somasundaram, that roughly 1,500 active-duty soldiers had been ordered to get ready for a possible deployment to Minnesota. The news comes after Trump threatened to invoke the act — which allows the president to deploy active-duty troops domestically to end a “rebellion” — in response to unrest in Minnesota around immigration enforcement in the city.
The Insurrection Act has not been invoked since 1992, when President George H.W. Bush called on the military to quell the Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of four officers involved in Rodney King’s police brutality case.
This is not the first time Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down protests. He did so around the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and during the 2024 presidential campaign, when he said he would use the military to enforce his immigration policy. Now, ordering soldiers to prepare for deployment could make an already tense situation in the Midwestern city even more so.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Sunday that immigration enforcement officials in the city are trying to “bait” protesters into giving Trump an excuse to call in the military. “We’re not going to give them an excuse to do the thing that clearly they’re trying to set up to do right now, which is these 1,500 troops,” Frey told CNN. “I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal government.”
Courtesy/Source: The Washington Post
