Jan
20
2026

Impeachment? Twenty-Fifth Amendment?

At This Point, I'm OK With Either

Daniel Hannan goes there:

He's referring to Trump's missive to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic ("Trump’s Letter to Norway Should Be the Last Straw", archive.today link) quotes it in its demented entirety:

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

Her commentary:

One could observe many things about this document. One is the childish grammar, including the strange capitalizations (“Complete and Total Control”). Another is the loose grasp of history. Donald Trump did not end eight wars. Greenland has been Danish territory for centuries. Its residents are Danish citizens who vote in Danish elections. There are many “written documents” establishing Danish sovereignty in Greenland, including some signed by the United States. In his second term, Trump has done nothing for NATO—an organization that the U.S. created and theoretically leads, and that has only ever been used in defense of American interests. If the European members of NATO have begun spending more on their own defense (budgets to which the U.S. never contributed), that’s because of the threat they feel from Russia.

Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.

Also commenting is Don Boudreaux, who deems the letter, accurately: A New Low.

But one troubling implication that shouldn’t be ignored is that the President of the United States just admitted that in his quest for a personal award he was not thinking about what is good and proper for the United States of America.

Despite my headline above, I assume the Twenty-Fifth Amendment approach isn't practical, given that the Cabinet is packed with cronies and sycophants. So: impeach his orange ass before he does more serious damage.

Also of note:

  • On the other hand, Trump continues to be Not Kamala. That's a plus, I suppose, albeit a very low bar. Jim Geraghty tells of recent evidence that Kamala Harris's Presidential Campaign Was Run by a Bunch of Lunatics. (archive.today link) He quotes from an Atlantic article:

    Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was already irritated by what he describes as “unnecessarily contentious” questions from the team vetting him to be Kamala Harris’s running mate when a senior aide made one final inquiry: “Have you ever been an agent of the Israeli government?”

    The question came from President Biden’s former White House counsel Dana Remus, who was a key member of Harris’s vice-presidential search team.

    Shapiro, one of the most well-known Jewish elected officials in the country—and one of at least three Jewish politicians considering a run for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination—says he took umbrage at the question. “Had I been a double agent for Israel? Was she kidding? I told her how offensive the question was,” Shapiro writes in his forthcoming book, Where We Keep the Light, a copy of which The Atlantic obtained ahead of its release on January 27.

    The exchange became even more tense, he writes, when Remus asked whether Shapiro had ever spoken with an undercover Israeli agent.

    Jim comments:

    Occam’s razor would suggest that either (1) the Harris campaign foresaw insurmountable obstacles from having a Jewish, pro-Israel running mate at a time when the Democratic grassroots were growing vehemently anti-Israel, and needed an excuse to conclude Shapiro had flunked the vetting process or (2) the Harris campaign was full of paranoid antisemites who believed that every American Jew they encountered was secretly working for the Mossad.

    Shapiro writes, “The fact that she asked, or was told to ask that question by someone else, said a lot about some of the people around the VP.”

    You can argue that we dodged a bullet in the 2024 election. I'd agree. Doesn't mean we're bulletproof.

  • It's all over now, Baby Blue. Ross Douthat claims Trump’s Second Term Has Ended the Conservative Era (archive.today link)

    Donald Trump spent his first term as the frustrated caretaker of the decaying Victorian mansion called the American conservative movement — floating plans to tear it down and build anew but mostly just knocking down a few walls, adding a gilded bathroom, doing some renovations that the residents had long desired (the Federalist Society Ballroom got a special shine-up) while letting mold and time do their work on the Limited Government Wing.

    His second term has been a different story. The smoke of demolition is everywhere, cranes are swinging wildly, and if the shape of the original building is still vaguely visible through the smoke, it’s clear that the final renovation is going to be radical. More of the original residents have fled to nearby properties (you can see a bunch of them clustered in the Mike Pence Gazebo), while others have barricaded themselves inside the True Conservatism Suite, where folks are pouring tea and wearing earplugs. A bunch of newcomers are throwing up competing additions (the A.I. Tower is a shiny spire overshadowing the Based Medieval Turret and the Garden of Cronyism), and the contractors are having a fistfight in the Hall of Christian Zionism.

    Out front, emblazoned with the Trump logo, a builder’s sign promises, “Future Home of American Nationalism Inc.”

    Ross thinks Trump might be a "disjunctive" president, other examples being Jimmy Carter, Herbert Hoover and John Quincy Adams. They "unhappily straddle transitions between old orders and emerging ones and who reveal the necessity of a transition without mastering or defining it."

    So we'll see, I guess.

  • Atlas shrugs, moves to Texas. Amy Curtis at Townhall provides a "this is how these people think" tweet in her article, featuring two folks who do remarkable impressions of Ayn Rand villains: 'You Didn't Build That:' Wealthy Journo Thinks California Is Entitled to Steal Billionaire's Money.

    Come to think of it, Ayn might have found them too over-the-top, lacking subtlety.

    And not that it matters, but I've long been puzzled by the phrase "piece of shit". As an insult, it seems clunky and vague. How big a piece? What consistency?

    And unnecessarily wordy. Why not just say "turd"?

    Anyway, Amy's article rants against the all-too-typical mentality exemplified by Kara Swisher. New Hampshire's own Lily Tang Williams is prominently featured!


Last Modified 2026-01-20 8:54 AM EST