“MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
During an especially invigorating stretch earlier this month, Donald Trump flooded his Truth Social page with posts referencing his proposed acquisition of the territory of Greenland. Far from being oblique or elliptical, Trump declared his intentions proudly and adopted the posture that their realization was, in fact, something of an inevitability. He even put his eldest son on the job. “Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland,” Trump wrote on Jan. 7 in text that went along with a video of one of his in-house jets landing amid entirely unlikely arctic environs. “They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength and PEACE!” Trump continued, retaining his distinctive habits of capitalization. “This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
The previous day, Trump posted a video of a Greenlander whipping on a red MAGA hat and affirming his support for Trump’s stated goal of authorizing, on behalf of the United States, the purchase of Greenland from Denmark. (The island is a so-called autonomous territory of the Danish Realm.) “We don’t want to be colonized by the Danish government anymore,” the man opined, which was evidently a sufficient sample size for Trump to draw conclusions about his program’s popularity in that land up north. “I am hearing that the people of Greenland are ‘MAGA,’” wrote Trump, who, after all, had twice marshaled his instincts for popular sentiment to win the presidency. It’s hard to win swing states like Pennsylvania. Trump must be wondering whether it can be much harder to take over, or “win,” Greenland. “Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our Nation,” Trump wrote.
Around this time, Trump also took to Truth Social to share a map that overlaid the words “UNITED STATES” in bold type on land masses that included both the actual U.S., the 48 contiguous states plus Alaska and Hawaii, and the nation of Canada, which Trump, concurrent with his plans for Greenland, has repeatedly designated as the future 51st state and its soon-to-resign prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau.” Even though his mind seems fixed on lands to his north, Trump has followed this same train of thought when arguing for increased U.S. involvement in various matters to his south, including taking over the Panama Canal and instituting a name change to the Gulf of Mexico: Trump thinks it ought to be called “Gulf of America” instead.
What to make of Trump’s daringly, even thrillingly, expansionist language? In the case of Canada, Trump seems likely to be either rubbing salt into the wounds of the defeated prime minister or revealing that he has recently watched Michael Moore’s 1995 movie Canadian Bacon, a comedy starring John Candy that, in an act of almost unbelievable prescience, imagined a U.S.-Canada skirmish. (“Give me one week, and I’ll have Americans burning maple leaves,” one of the president’s advisers says in the flick.) Suffice it to say, Canada is unlikely to emerge anytime soon as the largest U.S. state, and the thought experiment to rename the Gulf of Mexico would, even if effectuated, amount to little more than a bit of rhetorical brio — an expression of patriotism that resembles the Iraq War-era dubbing of French fries as “freedom fries.”
That being said, the possibilities of the U.S. procuring Greenland or gaining greater control over the Panama Canal are notions worthy of serious examination, but even if nothing comes of them, Trump should be applauded for advancing a vision of America that does not stop with its present borders and seemingly imperishable pieties. Trump’s demonstrations of acquisitiveness only sound outlandish or Saturday Night Live-worthy to those whose sense of America’s power has been dulled over the last 60 years of foreign entanglements, from Vietnam to Iraq, and cultural timidity, expressed in declining participation in the armed forces, declining birth rates, and, to invoke a certain notable former president, overall societywide malaise. The talking heads that laugh or worry grimly about Greenland becoming part of America would have had the same reaction to President John F. Kennedy when he pledged to deliver a man to the moon. They would have had the same reaction to the Louisiana Purchase, too.
Through his very presence in elected office, Trump offers a rebuke to the decadeslong trend toward stagnation and sluggishness — he is scarcely exaggerating when he contends that the movement that delivered him to the White House is unique in political history — and through his oratory, however impulsive or imperfect, he is attempting to rekindle a mood of American assertiveness. In the process, he is upsetting settled global dynamics that probably have no good reason to be settled. Is there any justification for the Kingdom of Denmark to preside, however distantly or benignly, over Greenland other than that of habit?
During his first administration, even while honoring bread-and-butter GOP policies, Trump showed nascent signs of a vision that was far more audacious and forward-thinking than his party had contemplated in decades. Forget “a thousand points of light” or “No Child Left Behind” — the 2019 establishment of the U.S. Space Force was the sort of venture that most appealed to the then-president. In his previous trade of real-estate mogul, Trump craved boldness in designing buildings and permanence in erecting them. An all-new branch of the armed forces had something of the same mix. He liked to do what conventional wisdom counseled against, such as stepping into North Korea. He liked to advocate American dominance even in enterprises he advised against, such as when he said the U.S. should “take the oil” if the country was foolish enough to go into Iraq in the first place. Even one of the means by which Trump has long proposed to control illegal immigration, through the construction of a literal wall, revealed his instinct to build and to do, not just to talk. A wall is visible. So is additional U.S. territory on a map or a globe.
This time, Trump seems likely to act with far more daring and swiftness than he did eight years ago. Like all presidents entering their second and final term, Trump recognizes that his legacy-building will expire four years from now, but unlike those presidents whose second terms come directly on the heels of their first, he embarks on his with the energy he has stored up during the last four years spent on golf greens, at MAGA rallies, and in courtrooms — environments that have recharged his batteries and, in the case of his courtroom sojourns, convinced him that the impossible is eminently possible: If the assorted court cases brought against him can collapse or produce pathetically diminishing returns, as in the New York bookkeeping affair, Trump must reckon, what is stopping him from at least talking about adding to the geography of the U.S.?
In fact, the Democrats’ persecution of Trump misfired not only because Trump won but because, in his winning, it persuaded Trump that he could accomplish just about anything. This has resulted in some misfires, such as the failed installation of former Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general, but it has also produced an obvious fearlessness in other Cabinet picks, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to become the director of national intelligence.
This audacity is a cause for excitement because Trump’s desire for boldness has, so far, coincided with American interests at home and abroad. Confident in his powers of persuasion, Trump is imagining the sorts of things that Americans had given up imagining for themselves. A Fox News truth-teller as secretary of defense — why not? Tariffs in lieu of the income tax — would that really be so disastrous? Shaving trillions off the federal budget, scrapping the Department of Education, and inducing the Danish to cede ground to the Americans — who says these things are impossible, and, above all, who really believes they are altogether bad ideas?
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Trump’s sudden burst of boldness is a reminder of how ill-equipped the media are to keep up with the train of thought of an active, pro-American president or presidential aspirant. Although Trump’s Greenland brainstorm dates back to his first administration, it was on the mind of no one during the 2024 election season. The questions the CBS moderators posed in the lone Trump-Harris debate — about Jan. 6 and cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio — seem astonishingly puny and dated next to Trump’s postelection plans.
In sports terms, Trump has gone from circumspect game-manager to brash Brett Favre-style gunslinger, but, as we all know, the Favres of the world, with their mixture of feistiness and creativity, generally bring home the championships. When voters put him in office in 2016, Trump seemed, at best, to be an outsider adding a bit of much-needed spice and street smarts to basic Republican policies — a stylistic change of pace but not much more. Now, Trump has a chance to govern as his own man: aware of the buried American appetite for thinking big and eager to satiate it. Even if he fails to deliver on his most quixotic plans, we should salute his attempt to remake the Oval Office as a place where daring things are contemplated on behalf of the public.
Peter Tonguette is a contributing writer to the Washington Examiner magazine.