How Trump’s Nobel obsession is upending geopolitics
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump sent an unusual text to the prime minister of Norway.
The two leaders had been messaging about Greenland – specifically, Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on European countries opposed to the United States taking over the autonomous Danish territory.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in a statement that he had been trying to de-escalate the situation. President Trump responded by linking his insistence on taking over Greenland to his grievance over not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize – bestowed yearly by the Nobel Committee in Norway.
Today on “Post Reports,” London bureau chief Steve Hendrix joins host Martine Powers with the latest on Trump’s bid for Greenland, how it all comes back to his perceived Peace Prize snub, and how his obsession is starting to have a real impact on geopolitics.
Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was edited by Dennis Funk and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Steve, I'm reminded of that line from Cool Runnings. |
| 0:06.3 | Have you seen Cool Runnings lately about the Jamaican Popsets? |
| 0:09.3 | It's been a while, but yes. |
| 0:11.4 | It's a great movie considering the Winter Olympics are coming up, but there's a line that John Candy's character says, |
| 0:16.7 | a gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it. |
| 0:21.5 | And I wonder if the same kind of logic applies here to the Nobel Peace Prize. |
| 0:27.8 | Well, I can't say that I have an opinion about that, but I can tell you I'm sure the president would not agree. |
| 0:36.0 | President Donald Trump has been interested in winning the Nobel Peace Prize for a very |
| 0:40.6 | long time. But that fixation took an even more astonishing turn over the weekend when a text |
| 0:46.7 | exchange between Trump and Norwegian Prime Minister Yunus Garstura was shared by PBS. |
| 0:53.0 | The two leaders had been messaging about Greenland, |
| 0:55.5 | the Danish territory that Trump really wants the U.S. to own. |
| 0:59.9 | Trump has threatened to place tariffs on European countries |
| 1:02.7 | that oppose a U.S. takeover of Greenland. |
| 1:05.8 | And as justification for this, |
| 1:08.1 | he brought up the Nobel Peace Prize that was not given to him. |
| 1:12.2 | He said since he was not given the prize last year, in spite of what he characterized as his |
| 1:18.5 | record-breaking year of peacemaking, that he no longer felt obliged to be purely devoted |
| 1:24.1 | to peace in his pursuits. |
| 1:29.8 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post reports. |
| 1:33.8 | I'm Martine Powers. It's Tuesday, January 20th. |
| 1:38.0 | Today, I'm talking with the Post's London Bureau Chief Steve Hendricks. |
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