Look at that shit-eating grin as Trump is given a Nobel prize by María Corina Machado, who doesn’t have the authority to award Nobel peace prizes.
It’s another embarrassment for the United States, that we elected this childish buffoon to the presidency. No, Donald, holding someone else’s prize does not mean you won it. I once got to briefly hold Harold Kroto’s Nobel, it does not mean I’m one of the premiere chemists of the age, and I would not go around smirking because I’d received a great honor. This is more like a spoiled child demanding a toy at the store, and a grown up getting tired of his whining and giving it to him. It’s more shame than honor.
Apparently, Trump has been hectoring Norwegian PM Støre to give him the award. The Nobel Peace Prize is not issued by the Norwegian government, but is handled by an independent committee, and Støre has nothing to do with it. The Nobel Foundation has since posted a rebuke of Trump’s nonsense, plainly stating that NO, he has not been awarded a Nobel prize. Naughty child. Keep crying and you’ll be sent to bed without your supper.
Statement from the Nobel Foundation
One of the core missions of the Nobel Foundation is to safeguard the dignity of the Nobel Prizes and their administration. The Foundation upholds Alfred Nobel’s will and its stipulations. It states that the prizes shall be awarded to those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind,” and it specifies who has the right to award each respective prize. A prize can therefore not, even symbolically, be passed on or further distributed.
Compounding our humiliation, is now complaining to Støre that he has to give him Greenland. Støre does not have the authority to bestow Greenland on anyone — that’s a possession of Denmark. Denmark and Norway are two different countries. So he sent of this stupid letter.
Dear Ambassador:
President Trump has asked that the following message, shared with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, be forwarded to your [named head of government/state]
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, | 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. | 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”
The country of Norway does not give Nobel prizes, Trump has not stopped 8 wars, Russia and China are not threatening to take over Greenland, we are. Well, Trump is — the majority of American oppose taking it over. Complaining that their only claim is because a boat landed there…well, yeah, that’s colonialism for you, and it’s the only basis for American ownership of this part of the continent.
This whole thing is the logic of a greedy baby.
Seriously, we need to get rid of this demented narcissist. And if Republicans can’t see reason, we need to get rid of them, too.
FTFY
Though it has to be said that withholding supper from a child is not a 21st century education method.
His dementia has accelerated quite rapidly. C’mon aneurysm, free the world from this orange pustule.
Gotta admire that level of statesmanship.
That nobility of purpose, the grandeur of character, the graceful restraint!
(What a specimen!)
Machado’s gesture and DingDong’s beaming reaction has spawned a plethora of imitations including a child “awarding” him her prize for winning a spelling bee.
He’s a sick old fart.
BTW the DOJ has still not released the Epstein files in defiance of a law passed by Congress…a Republican controlled Congress. Wonder if they’re going to do something about it.
Cthulhu, I’m tired of this senile old man making threats every single day now.
.1. Why did the Nobel committee give the prize to Machado anyway?
Everything I’ve seen of her since indicates that she didn’t deserve it.
She opposed a dictator.
Well, so what?
I and tens of millions of my friends oppose Trump the dictator every way we can.
FWIW, there is a Nationwide Free American protest tomorrow.
I’m part of the local group and there are at least 500 events scheduled.
.2. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee might as well just stop giving it out.
They are clearly having trouble finding people to give it to.
It should have ended when they gave it to Henry Kissinger.
If they can’t find worthy recipients, stop scraping the bottom of the barrel.
I’m expecting they will end up giving it to Netanyahu for only killing 71,000 Gaza civilians so far.
Or maybe Robert F. Kennedy jr. for everlasting friendship with the measles and Covid-19 viruses.
As everyone including this Norwegian Prime Minister Store has noticed, Trump is not just senile and suffering from dementia.
He is now very seriously incapacitated and going downhill fast.
It is obvious that he is a meat puppet and his so called staff are operating the strings.
Whenever you read something from him that is grammatically correct and coherent, you know he didn’t write it.
No one can say when this ends, but we can all say that it isn’t going to end well for the USA in general, and the US citizens in particular.
@7 raven
And even worse, he has not surrounded himself with competent administrators who can prop him up and give the illusion that he is coping adequately. He has surrounded himself with sycophants whose only qualification is to reinforce his narcissism.
I hear that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is offering a prize to whoever “disposes” of Trump.
@6: Kissinger, yeah. It’s been a joke ever since. And Obama won for doing…what exactly? Other than being better than Bush II? (I mean, nothing against him, but he’d been president for like five minutes).
Wikipedia sez:
“The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to United States president Barack Obama (b. 1961) for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.[1] The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the award on October 9, 2009, citing Obama’s promotion of nuclear nonproliferation[2] and a “new climate” in international relations fostered by Obama, especially in reaching out to the Muslim world.[3][4]”
So, for that.
The way you deal with somebody with dementia is you agree with everything they say, but take away their keys.
This letter to “Jonas” should be grounds for convening an emergency meeting to invoke the 25th amendment. Each and every day brings more examples that the man is not fit to be in charge of his own affairs let alone the USA government and that his mental capacity is going down fast. That should be shouted on every news media 24/7 until something is done but of course nothing will be done.
Ahcuach @ 12
Keir Starmer and various other dignitaries in Europe tried to flatter Trump but we now see it had no lasting effect.
Fortunately we now see a realisation among European leaders that appeasement does not work and the only viable response is to respond with strength, because TACO.
Completely aside from the irony of saying Denmark has no right to Greenland just because “a boat landed there”, from America, which we European-descended Americans only have a right to because of our boats…
And the irony of boat-based ownership in the discussion, given that Greenland “discovered” North America before most of the people who started the colonies that became us…
How does he expect our invading troops would arrive in Greenland? I’m betting, for most of the initial invasion force, it would be on a boat.
I think the Nobel Prize thing here is emblematic of the whole right wing movement for the past several decades. He has the physical thing now, therefore he deserves it. That he has not done any of the hard work that it symbolizes is immaterial.
It is the same thing as flag worship. If it could be torn down and ripped up and used as a life saving bandage, you’d do that, I’d do that, as an obligation in fact, and I would think that that would be well within supporting Australian ideals and values (my case) as I would want them to be. Right wingers would rather ‘respect the flag, see: criminalizing flag burning.
It fits in with the sentiment I’ve seen expressed in ‘Was it Adolf or Donald?’ videos: If Donald said it, then it’s true.
It fits in with military worship while treating veterans appallingly.
I’m scared of needles, so instead of facing that, I’ll hate on vaccines.
Debase the office of POTUS in order to acquire it, why not?
Why plan your major cities in Texas at all? Waste of damn taxpayers money is all.
It’s all about posturing instead of working. It’s easy to salute while someone bleeds in front of you, it’s easy to be told what is true rather than evaluate evidence, it’s easy to admire a crisp uniform, and easy to look away from a wheelchair or from PTSD. Blame the whoever when the chemical plant floods and spreads toxicity all over the next door school, never put in place drainage regulations, let alone zoning ones.
In my state of Victoria for the past 5 years or so the Labor (left wing ostensibly for non Aussie folks) state govt has been coordinating the hard work of thousands of people to get rid of suburban train level crossings in Melbourne. In order of where they are snarling up traffic the most. All of ’em, they’re going underground. It has made an enormous difference, every day, to everyone in Melbourne, I would argue without exception. 5 Millions of us or so. And it is hard work.
I asked my rightward leaning brother, who used to go over 5 level crossings on his way to work and now doesn’t what he thought of the states level crossing program. He didn’t know what I was talking about, despite personally benefiting 10 times every week day from it. By a lot. Couldn’t even tell me whether it had made any difference to his commute. (It has, I remember him having regular complaints about being held up by 10 minutes on a pretty regular basis by just one of them, No more.) The right wing position of the Liberal party here in Vic is of course to cut a few hundred million in spending out of public transport, as slated for the next 3 decades or so. Makes a pretty good election slogan ‘Save Billions of YOUR tax payer dollars’ or some such nonsense.
The point is that short term thinking, the mistaking of the symbol of the thing for the thing itself, is seen as just as good as doing the almost invisible at times hard work that actually helps people. MAGA, in fact just about every every damn thing the Republican party has done since maybe before Nixon, might be explainable by just one word: Laziness.
About the boat thing, there is actually a document about the US recognizing the right of Denmark over Greenland. This article explains it: In 1917 The US traded any rights to Greenland for Epstein Island. Literally.
Zooming out a bit…
Happy Martin Luther King Day.
Today is the 80th birthday of the wonderful Dolly Parton, a singer who donated her money to children.
The 60th birthday of singer Lena Philipsson.
The birthday of the late singers Robert Palmer (born 77 years ago) and Janis Joplin (born 83 years ago).
These are legacies to be truly proud of.
A complete asshole will be 80 years this spring but apart from his obeisa… wossname, flunkies, no one will cheer for him. A lot of people will cheer when he takes the big dirt nap, however.
.
If anyone in the future associate the year 1946 with Trump, it will be in the same manner people recall an art-school reject was born 1888.
On that note.
The fact that USA literally ceded any right to Greenland for Epstein Island should be shouted in TV ads everywhere.
Jean@7–
Yeah, but as you know ratified agreements with the US are only binding to the other signatories.
birgerjohansson, be aware Jeffrey Epstein was born in 1953, which is long after the purchase.
And what was bought is all the (now) U.S. Virgin Islands, not just Little Saint James.
So, claim is wrong (it was for a whole archipelago) and it’s not the actual name of the island and the purchase did not include anything about Greenland, that was a separate thing.
cf.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_the_Danish_West_Indies
and
https://nordics.info/show/artikel/declaration-from-usa-on-danish-sovereignty-of-greenland-1916/
Basically, every claim there is false, which is typical of that publication.
Hyperbole and facile opinion and speculation, asserted without warrant.
John Morales,
Did you actually read the article I linked to? The facts presented are not false even if the title is somewhat of a click bait. There is no pretense of a quid pro quo in the article but just that there is a link between the 2 things: Epstein island (bought by the US as part of what is now the U.S. Virgin Islands) and the Denmark control over Greenland.
As usual, you’re being an asshole and taking the most dismissive view of what others are posting. You’re really a pretentious ass who doesn’t contribute anything to the conversation.
Jean: “Did you actually read the article I linked to? The facts presented are not false even if the title is somewhat of a click bait.”
I did. Thus I corrected it.
The one was an addendum to the other, and the sale document (the treaty itself) says nothing about it.
I linked to both.
By showing the truth. If you find that dismissive, so be it.
You’re really a pretentious ass who doesn’t contribute anything to the conversation.
This was a most helpful comment on your part, was it?
Very contributive!
The facts presented are not false even if the title is somewhat of a click bait: “This article explains it: In 1917 The US traded any rights to Greenland for Epstein Island. Literally.”
Maybe just a bit. Perhaps. :)
Still, now we all know to what the claims refer, right?
Clarification has ensued. Surely a contribution!
Downside is that it annoyed you.
That is unfortunate.
(Also, did you mean ‘ass’ as in donkey, or ‘ass’ as USAnian for arse? Just wondering)
Aussie ABC has a short but sweet and spot on annotated factcheck here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-20/donald-trump-greenland-message-analysed-line-by-line/106246964
@12. ahcuah : “The way you deal with somebody with dementia is you agree with everything they say, but take away their keys.”
Or in this case, their nuclear codes, command of the world’s largest and most powerful military forces and unchecked expanded executive Presidential power over the United States of America and by bullying disproportionate influence and international treaties and agreements (those remaining intact of those anyhow) over much of the rest of the world too.
@3. Tethys “..C’mon aneurysm, free the world from this orange pustule.”
Then we have President JD Vance and Shadow POTUS Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin to look forward to. The whoile lot of the Repugs need to be removed ASAP. Somehow. Not just Demented Genocide Don. Current Shadow POTUS Stephen Miller will still be around too.
What’s amazing in all this is that any Republican is still supporting it. I mean, it’s not merely unpopular, it’s at historic levels. In the poll by CBS, 70% of the public doesn’t even approve of buying Greenland, much less taking it by force. That gets up to 86% opposing using force to take it, which is only that low because there are only 70% of Republicans opposed. With Democrats it’s 97% and with Independents 90% opposed. With those kind of numbers we should see almost universal opposition in Congress and an actual War Powers resolution forbidding any military action toward Greenland or any NATO ally. But somehow we don’t, because too many are still in thrall to Trump one way or another.
@stevoR
Cults die with their leader. I don’t think he has much time left judging by the typical progression of dementia. Maybe a couple months? We can impeach the rest of the corrupt magats after midterms. The GOP hate shady too.
Vance is desperately glaring at the calendar in his office (more likely, on his phone app, right next to the Signal icon) wishing that January 21,† 2027 was later this week. Then he’d be able to gather the cabinet, invoke the 25th Amendment, take the oath of office, and
• Run for President in 2028 as the incumbent President, and
• Run again in 2032, because the term for the 2032 election (expiring January 20, 2037) will be less than ten years in office.
All of which presumes that he’d win in 2028, but acceptance of and planning for potential failure in an election has not been a strength of the GOP since (pages back… pages back…) McKinley.
Meanwhile, a very important question: Leaving issues of dementia aside, is the current President a sociopath expressing with narcissistic tendencies, or a narcissist expressing with sociopathic tendencies? (That he’s got the emotional maturity and stability of a developmentally-delayed four-year-old is just a complication.)
† Due to the way “days” are counted for legal purposes, the 20th isn’t the first full day of term — the 21st is. And he really should delay until the 22d in 2027 because that’s the end of the work week.
It’s the oligarchs, both domestic and foreign, that want the US to have Greenland. They hear “Golden Dome” and they ejaculate so hard it puts to shame those of Jimmy Swaggart when he would yell out, “Come to Jesus!” If they didn’t want it they would instruct their puppet governments to enact laws and rules forbidding any present or former NATO member from taking or threatening to take any territories, with punishment being all citizens thereof being persona non grata and all corporations thereof denied any further business access. Sure it would take decades to get all the lawsuits settled, but as soon as those laws are on the books it would be TACO time.
Raven @6 ,Snarki @9
They need to stop giving the Nobel Peace Prize to politicians and politics adjacent people.
They should stick to giving it people most people had never heard of like the ban land mines woman and the African Green Belt woman. These people are the least likely turn out to be evil.
Caligula or George III would be an improvement on the Orange Shitsack
I’ve long suspected that Din Dong’s drive for the Peace Prize is because Obama got it and he’s Black.
When Indiana is invited to the White House they should leave the trophy at home.
They should give me the Nobel Peace Prize. I have stopped exactly as many wars as the manbaby in the WH actually has. More, if you subtract the number of wars started.
Once the big orange bully is dead the cockroaches that hid in his shadow will scamper and scatter all over the place. There’s no one else they can hide behind. Shady Vance commands all the respect of an asthmatic snail with the charisma of a used condom. He’s not going to pick up where Drowzy Donny left and all the Millers and Altmans and Musks know this. That’s why they pump that stirring orange corpse full of meth to get him to push their agenda through as fast as possible.
He’s channeling Rhoda Pennmark, grabbing, at any cost, what he thinks he deserves (which is everything). I guess Ms. Machado didn’t want to end up like little Claude Daigle. I think, at this point, The Bad Seed (1956 version) should be required watch along with Judgement at Nuremberg.
Vision of Homer and Smithers operating Mr Burns as a puppet on strings.
.
Just in.
Trump is now complaining that Britain is giving back the island Diego Garcia to the population that was illegally deported to make way for a military base.
It is all performative sabre rattling for the base.
Nobel Peace Prize? No!! Maybe an Ig Nobel prize.
Trump has meltdown on tarmac, threatens France with 200% tariffs.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pVIxsjXW5iw
It looks like the EU has found a few ovaries and spines.
They are having an emergency meeting in two days to decide how to defend themselves from American aggression.
Like a lot and probably by now most Americans, I find myself in the position of rooting for the Europeans.
I’ll be in the streets today with a few thousand of my friends, the Free America Nationwide protests.
Oh, much bettter to arrange an assassination! Trump will be a lot more use to Vance as a martyr, justifying an immediate declaration of martial law, than as a gibbering wreck who still thinks he’s POTUS. And a patsy who can be passed off as “Antifa” should be easy to find.
No, it’s definitely not going back to the Chagossians – the indigenous inhabitants. It’s being handed over to Mauritius, which has no moral claim to it whatever. Some of the Chagossians were dumped there when they were forcibly removed from Diego Garcia and neighbouring islands, but their spokespeople oppose the deal. So, for entirely different reasons to Trump’s, I also oppose it.
The EU has a lot of leverage if they choose to use it.
They just don’t know it yet because no one ever had to worry about the USA switching sides and becoming a danger to the whole world.
A few:
.1. US military power, which is our main power these days, depends heavily on forward bases around the world.
We have 40 in Europe.
If the EU closes those bases down, we lose a huge amount.
All those tanks, drones, rockets, ships, artillery, and soldiers are useless if they are stuck on the island continent of North America.
Why would European nations such as Germany and Spain host the military bases of an enemy nation?
.2. Foreigners hold a huge amount of our National Debt in the form of US treasury bond. Sell them off.
.3. Goodbye to the dollar as the world currency.
.4. Our companies.
Stop buying American made goods.
Our tech companies depend heavily on foreign markets and are also main supporters of Trump.
Do the Europeans really need Facebook? (Does anyone need Facebook? I dropped my account over a decade ago and never missed it.)
.5. Form alliances with our other former friends such as Canada and Mexico.
.6. I’m sure people can come up with more ways to defend themselves from the USA.
When is Radio Free America going to start broadcasting to the USA and will they have good rock and punk music channels?
@42:
I disagree. Vance (and his immediate advisers) haven’t shown the ability to plan a beer bash in a brewery — and they’d have to overcome the egregiously-harmed-by-the-PATRIOT-Act Secret Service, which would either exceed their capabilities or, if somehow successful, leave him vulnerable to, say, Stephen Miller.
My tongue is so far in cheek that it has emerged somewhere near Davos.
Does that really look like genuine smile to anybody? That’s just the shape he makes with his mouth whenever a camera is pointed at him. His eyes are saying “Where am I? What’s going on? Who are these people? Have I just soiled myself?”
@44 raven
The US always was a danger to the whole world. It was merely on our side.
.2. That might work for the first one to start selling those off. But most countries would then be selling those at a huge loss.
.4. Nobody needs facebook, but there are few alternatives for Windows.
That’s what the EuroStack initiative is trying to address. (Well, not just Windows, but the US dominance of information technology generally.)
Wall Street seems to be voting “No” on the Greenland annexation idea.
There’s a delegation of US congress people in Denmark right now trying to reassure them. Of course, they should be in Washington kicking his ass out.
Incidentally, the other president driven from office was driven out by his own party, and it is the same party.
And no, I’m not naive enough to believe that everything gets magically better with JD in the driver’s seat. In fact, it may get in even more fucked up.
I don’t know why that would reassure anyone.
All the GOP congress people and a lot of the Democratic party congress people have decided they don’t matter and don’t even have any sort of job to do.
They are silent and apathetic.
They are hard to tell apart from house plants.
It has reached the point where I hope the EU uses its ‘economic bazooka’ on the u.s. If the civilized world sold off all their u.s. gov’t bonds a a slight loss (that’s legal), it would send a very painful but NECESSARY message to the murderous, sociopathic, magat plutocrats that are ru(i)nning this country.
shermanj, Trump has TACOed again. So, that’s not gonna happen.
The EU knows what it is doing. It is not necessary.
Part of the prob is that now the EU is dependent on USAnian liquified gas, just as they were dependent on Russian pipeline gas before the Ukraine invasion. That and disentangling from the USA defense-wise.
The gears are grinding, but. The circumstances are now set.
And they’ve [EU] had a few more centuries’ worth of experience at dealing with these sort of great power dances.
—
raven:
“There’s a delegation of US congress people in Denmark right now trying to reassure them.”
&
“They are silent and apathetic.”
Heh. So.
Silently and apathetically sending delegations overseas for a purpose, you say?
Machado is a warmonger and an advocate of genocide who should not have received the Nobel Peace Prize in the first place.