Trump Admits Nobel Peace Prize Wouldn’t Improve US Lives

“What would improve the lives of people are the people that are living,” Trump said during a raucous press conference before he departs for Davos, Switzerland, and the World Economic Forum. “I saved probably tens of millions of lives in the wars,” he continued referring to the eight conflicts he has played a hand in either preventing or ending, including a bitter border dispute between India and Pakistan.

The president estimated that his efforts could have saved as many as 20 million people. Analysts will quibble with that number and debate whether Trump is giving himself too much credit. But his public statement clashes with his private demands.

Snubbed again by the Swedish Nobel Committee, Trump now tells world leaders that his lack of hardware is another reason the United States must acquire new territory.

“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,” Trump wrote in a message to Jonas Gahr Store, prime minister of Norway.

The Norwegians confirmed on Monday that the message was real. The next day, the president downplayed his appetite for the award. His desire for Greenland remains unabated. He has insisted that acquiring the territory is necessary to deter growing Chinese and Russian influence in the Arctic region.

When asked how far he is willing to go to acquire the strategically important island, the president replied, “You will find out.” European nations have dispatched forces to the territory controlled by Denmark. French President Emmanuel Macron called on the Old World this week to rally against Trump’s imperial ambitions and a system governed by “the law of the strongest.”

But is tearing apart NATO a worthy price for a trinket? Trump insisted that all would be smoothed over after his meetings with the Europeans this week: “I think that we will work something out where NATO’s going to be very happy and where we’re going to be very happy.”

Trump has strained the old rules-based world order during the first year of his second term. European allies have increased military spending at his direction and as he threatens to retreat from that continent. In that region, and in the Middle East, many allies cheered his strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. And in the Western Hemisphere, the president has been more than happy to flex American muscle, nabbing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a daring midnight raid. His mission to end the land war in Ukraine, meanwhile, continues.

A president can only focus on so much at the same time. Some in the America First camp have voiced frustration with the emphasis on fixing crises abroad rather than at home. “Foreign country’s problems are not our problems,” complained former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last week while pointing to spiking health insurance premiums “among many others.”

Trump already has a Nobel Peace Prize, albeit a re-gifted one. Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado dropped her prize off at the White House after an Oval Office meeting with the president. But he would like his own prize, even if it means inflaming relations with European leaders, and even if – as the populist president admits – the golden medal would not help the average American.

Peace is its own reward, at least for now. And perhaps until the U.S. acquires Greenland.