Excerpt: For several hours this morning, a message attributed to Donald Trump circulated online that looked so unhinged, so bluntly imperial, that many assumed it had to be satire. Screenshots spread with comments comparing it to The Onion, to parody accounts, to deliberately exaggerated fiction. The language was too crude. The claims too sweeping. The grievance too naked. It was not satire. It was a text message from the President of the United States to the Prime Minister of Norway, confirmed publicly by Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre himself.
The message that should not exist
For several hours this morning, a message attributed to Donald Trump circulated online that looked so unhinged, so bluntly imperial, that many assumed it had to be satire. Screenshots spread with comments comparing it to The Onion, to parody accounts, to deliberately exaggerated fiction. The language was too crude. The claims too sweeping. The grievance too naked.
It was not satire.
It was a text message from the President of the United States to the Prime Minister of Norway, confirmed publicly by Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre himself.
According to Støre’s official statement, the exchange began with a restrained diplomatic message from Norway and Finland. Støre and Finnish President Alexander Stubb contacted Trump to express opposition to newly announced tariff increases against Norway, Finland, and select other countries. They urged de-escalation and proposed a telephone conversation later that same day.
Trump’s response came shortly after. He chose to share it with other NATO leaders.
In that message, Trump wrote, among other things, that because Norway did not award him the Nobel Peace Prize, he no longer felt obligated to think purely of peace. He questioned Denmark’s right of ownership over Greenland, dismissed centuries of sovereignty as equivalent to boats landing at random, asserted that NATO owed him personally, and concluded that the world would not be secure unless the United States had complete and total control of Greenland.
This was not a private rant leaked by an aide or an off-the-record remark distorted by intermediaries. It was a direct communication from a sitting president to allied heads of government, framed explicitly as policy reasoning.
Støre’s response, by contrast, was measured, calm, and unmistakably diplomatic. Norway reaffirmed that Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, expressed full support for NATO’s role in maintaining security and stability in the Arctic, and clarified once again that the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by an independent committee, not by the Norwegian government.
The contrast between the two messages could not be sharper.
From satire to diagnosis
What made the moment so jarring was not just the content, but the form. This is language that until very recently belonged to caricature. Personal grievance elevated to geopolitical doctrine. International law dismissed as inconvenience. Territorial claims justified by entitlement, grievance, and retrospective myth making. Peace treated as conditional on recognition of personal greatness rather than shared restraint.
This is not merely bad policy. It is a worldview that rejects the basic architecture of the postwar international order. Sovereignty becomes negotiable by force. Alliances become transactional debts. Law becomes subordinate to ego.
That is why so many readers instinctively assumed parody. The message violated an unspoken expectation that even reckless leaders maintain some rhetorical boundary between impulse and doctrine. That boundary has now collapsed.
A brief note on the 25th-Amendment
The 25th-Amendment to the United States Constitution exists for moments when presidential power becomes disconnected from basic functionality. Ratified in 1967 after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, it clarifies what happens if a president dies, resigns, or is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office.
Most relevant here is Section 4. It allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to declare that the president is unfit to govern, even without the president’s consent. Power is then temporarily transferred, subject to congressional oversight. It is an extraordinary mechanism, deliberately difficult to invoke, designed not for political disagreement but for situations where judgment, stability, or basic reality testing has failed.
The amendment was written with medical incapacity in mind. Stroke. Coma. Severe illness.
It did not anticipate a scenario in which a sitting president openly articulates a worldview that rejects international law, treats peace as conditional on personal grievance, and frames territorial control as a matter of raw entitlement. And yet, this is precisely the gap it was meant to guard against: the moment when a president does not simply govern badly, but goes off the rails entirely, where judgment collapses and power is exercised as if reality itself were optional.
If I were to send a message like that to a foreign head of government, my wife would not consult constitutional law. She would invoke the 25th-Amendment on the spot, and probably the twenty sixth through the one thousand seven hundred and thirty seventh as well. In private life, we recognise immediately when someone has lost proportion and grounding. In public office, the same behaviour is often reclassified as “policy.”
Why this matters beyond Greenland
This is not, at its core, a dispute about Greenland. Greenland is the trigger, not the substance. What matters here is the logic being articulated, and the precedent it establishes when voiced by a sitting president of the United States.
If peace becomes conditional on personal recognition or reward, then diplomacy ceases to be negotiation and becomes extortion. Agreements are no longer based on shared interests or mutual restraint, but on the satisfaction of individual grievance. The moment a leader announces that restraint applies only when properly flattered, the entire architecture of diplomatic trust erodes.
If sovereignty depends on a country’s ability to repel great powers by force, then international law collapses into a hierarchy of strength. Small states no longer possess rights, only temporary tolerance. Borders become provisional, valid only until challenged by someone stronger. That is not a rule based order. It is a return to pre modern power politics, dressed up in contemporary language.
If alliances are framed as personal debts rather than collective commitments, then collective security disintegrates. NATO stops being a mutual defense pact and becomes a loyalty test. Protection is no longer guaranteed by treaty, but contingent on obedience, gratitude, and perceived usefulness to the dominant actor. That is not partnership. It is fealty.
This is the logic of empire, not of law. And what makes it extraordinary is not that such ideas exist, but that they are being articulated plainly, without euphemism, as justification for policy. Not whispered in back channels. Not floated as trial balloons. But stated directly, in writing, to allied heads of government.
The danger lies not primarily in what Trump believes, but in the fact that he is willing to state it openly as a governing principle. The quiet part is no longer quiet. The performative mask has slipped, revealing a worldview in which international order is subordinate to personal grievance, historical complexity is dismissed as inconvenience, and legitimacy is reduced to force and possession.
That shift matters far beyond any single territory. It signals to every small and medium sized state that their security rests not on law or alliance, but on the mood and ego of the powerful. It tells allies that restraint is optional, promises are revocable, and norms apply only when convenient. It tells adversaries exactly how to behave, not to integrate into the system, but to overpower it.
Not a call, but a warning
What follows is not an argument that the 25th-Amendment should be invoked. That judgment belongs to constitutional actors, not commentators, and it carries consequences that extend far beyond any single presidency.
It is, however, a reminder of why the amendment exists at all. Not to resolve political disagreement. Not to correct unpopular policy. But to protect the system in moments when power becomes untethered from reason. When judgment no longer constrains authority. When the office fails to discipline the person who occupies it.
The amendment was designed for scenarios that seemed unimaginable when it was written. Moments when the problem is not ideology, but basic fitness. Not intent, but coherence. Not disagreement, but detachment from shared reality.
What is unsettling about today’s events is not outrage, shock, or even fear. It is recognition. Recognition that safeguards once discussed only in constitutional theory now feel less abstract. Less hypothetical. Less safely confined to textbooks.
When satire becomes indistinguishable from policy, the issue is no longer tone or rhetoric. It is stability.