By DANIEL HANNAN for the Daily Mail 

Jan 21, 2026

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Look, there is no point in dancing around this. The most powerful man in the world is as mad as a box of frogs. Deranged, demented, doolally.

What other possible take is there on Donald Trump writing to the prime minister of Norway to say that he is so upset about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize that he might just invade Greenland?

I can’t do better than to quote his letter in full. Read it aloud for maximum effect.

‘Dear Jonas: 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.

‘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 a boat that landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.

‘I have done more for Nato than any 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’

We can overlook the weird grammar and random capitalisations: that is how Trump writes. We can overlook, too, the irony of a US president claiming that arriving somewhere in a boat establishes no claim.

We can even overlook the lies. Trump has not ‘stopped 8 Wars PLUS’, nor done anything for Nato except threaten it and question its mutual defence clause.

Oh, and the Norwegian government – let alone Denmark – does not control the Nobel Committee.

What we cannot overlook is the megalomaniac tone: ‘Complete and Total Control of Greenland.’

Trump has fallen into a Caligulan psychosis. He cannot accept not getting his way. Whenever he loses at something – a business deal, an election, an awards ceremony – he cries foul and refuses to accept the result.

The people around him who recognise this tendency have failed to check it. On the contrary, through flattery, cowardice and obsequiousness, they have encouraged it, with calamitous effects. 

They must now take their share of the blame for the destruction of the Western alliance, the boost to Russia and China and the increased risk of war.

As always, when Trump issues some delusional statement, apologists rush forward with justifications that he himself has not used. Over Greenland, these at first tended to be strategic, involving missile trajectories or critical minerals.

But all such sophistries were blown away, not just by the facts on the ground – the US can station whatever military hardware it wants in Greenland, but has been running down its presence there – but by Trump’s own talk of how this land grab was ‘psychologically important for me’.

So apologists have moved on to a different excuse. This is just ‘art of the deal’ stuff, they say; sabre-rattling to get a better price when the deal is eventually done. Watch his deeds, not his words.

Well, when you are the leader of the most powerful country in the world, your words are a kind of deed. By talking as he does, Trump degrades his office and debases his republic.

I can think of only two cases where a government has attacked Norway over the Nobel Peace Prize. Hitler exploded when the 1935 accolade went to Carl von Ossietzky, a German pacifist. And in 2010, China froze relations with Norway over its award to the dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Never before, though, has a leader threatened Norway over not getting the award.

In any case, there are deeds here, too: tariffs are being imposed on America’s closest allies even as Trump proposes a closer economic partnership with Russia.

You have to ask yourself what he would be doing differently if he truly were, as conspiracy theorists suggest, a Kremlin asset. 

Never mind his betrayal of Ukraine. His trade policies and annexation threats against Canada and Greenland have irreparably damaged the Western world order, of which the US has been the chief beneficiary.

Congress could put a stop to this insanity tomorrow. It could take back control of trade policy and cancel his tariffs. It could bring impeachment proceedings on the impeccable grounds that the president is plainly no longer compos mentis.

The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they gave Congress these powers. They were obsessed with the story of how the Roman Republic had ended.

They were determined to prevent the rise of what they called ‘Caesarists’, meaning men who believed that they were bigger than the Constitution. They knew how difficult it was to remove such men once they were in office, surrounded by sycophants.

They would be shocked, not by Trump, but by the failure of the system to check him. A republic specifically founded to constrain the power of leaders who showed dictatorial leanings is failing in its primary purpose.

Trump has, until now, had a chunk of public opinion with him and, being thin-skinned and vindictive, he turns his followers against anyone who crosses him. 

This makes Republican politicians, who are subject to deselection in primary elections, disgustingly servile. 

I noticed on my last trip to DC that, when criticising any aspect of Trump’s policy – not attacking him, just making the case for, say, free trade – Republicans would glance around and lower their voices, like dissidents in an autocracy.

Why does the Maga movement follow him slavishly as he descends into lunacy?

Some are simply on a hook. They backed him initially for any number of reasons, some of them respectable. 

Maybe they wanted deregulation, an immigration crackdown, or conservative Supreme Court appointments. Maybe they loathed his opponents. Maybe they then began to feel invested. 

He was delivering a fair chunk of what he promised, so they blotted out the evidence of his erratic behaviour, dismissing it as media fabrication.

 Now, though, he has hit on the one issue where Maga will not follow. Americans voted for him to stop ‘forever wars’ and 71 per cent oppose attacking Greenland.

I have some sympathy. Although I opposed Trump at all three of his elections, his opponents were indeed terrible. And he does sometimes get things right. He is right, for example, to criticise the terrible Chagos deal, whereby Britain pays to give away strategic territory.

Was he initially talked into backing the handover as a favour to Keir Starmer? Or is he so focused on Complete and Total Control of Greenland that he doesn’t want any kind of lease option being floated as an alternative?

The point is that occasionally making a good call doesn’t make him fit for office.

The US was founded as ‘a government of laws, and not of men’. No one is above the rules. From the beginning, Trump refused to recognise that the Constitution was bigger than he was; refusing to accept the result of the 2020 election and, more recently, demanding a third term.

At every stage, ambitious men – Congressmen, officials, think-tankers, writers, historians, foreign leaders – rushed to abase themselves before him, feeding his narcissism.

Now we see tyrants ascendant globally, Nato ruined, the economic order disrupted and the rule of law in retreat as tinpot dictators take their lead from Trump. 

And all for what? To ‘drink liberal tears’? To flatter the ego of a vainglorious manchild? God forgive us.

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere is a Conservative peer and President of the Institute for Free Trade.