Thanks to NYT’s sane washing, most people didn’t notice how nutso Trump was about Greenland until he sent his batshit note to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre the other day.

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 that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other 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

But Trump said more about his own fragile psyche in the interview that NYT sane washed. Donald Trump didn’t just describe his aspiration to own Greenland as necessary for his own personal psychology.

David E. Sanger

Why is ownership important here?

President Trump

Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base.

David E. Sanger

So you’re going to ask them to buy it?

Katie Rogers

Psychologically important to you or to the United States?

President Trump

Psychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything. [my emphasis]

He also described — while explaining why he no longer had a good relationship with Zohran Mamdani — his Venezuelan invasion as a psychological success.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs

Do you still have a good relationship with Mamdani?

President Trump

Well, I did, but [Mamdani] hit me sooner than I thought. I thought it would take him at least a month. I mean, he hit me on Venezuela.

Tyler Pager

What did he — what did you say to him?

President Trump

He didn’t. We didn’t talk about it. Oh, yeah, we did. He called and said: “I just want to let you know. I’m going to come out against —”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs

He called you beforehand?

President Trump

Uh, he called me after it was done, after this incredible military, financial and psychological success. He called me to say that, respectfully, I disagree with what you did. And I said, “Give me a reason why.” And I didn’t feel he had a reason, but he disagreed nevertheless. I would say it was politics more than anything else. Although I think it’s bad politics.

I think it’s been one of the very successful — it’s been one of the greatest military success — nobody’s ever seen anything like it. We attacked a fort with thousands of people and soldiers in that fort. You know, that was built there. It was built as a safe house with sealed doors and everything else. [Mr. Trump makes a sound like an explosion.] It was like they were paper. [my emphasis]

And he viewed it as a psychological success against the background of Jimmy Carter’s failed attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages, Operation Eagle Claw, a failure that became the impetus for modernizing US Special Forces.

Trump explicitly raised the Carter failure in response to Katie Rogers’ question about what he was thinking as he watched the operation.

David E. Sanger

Did you watch either by video —

President Trump

I did. I was, I saw it.

David E. Sanger

What — what did that feel like? You were down at Mar-a-Lago?

President Trump

It’s like watching a movie, except you’re — it’s a little bit, you know — look, you don’t know if —

Katie Rogers

Are you worried when this is happening, while you’re watching? Or what is going through your mind?

President Trump

Yeah, I’m worried that it ends up being Jimmy Carter disaster that destroyed his entire administration.

And then — after an extensive discussion with Sanger about whether the Eagle Claw failure caused Carter’s election loss that year (neither mentioned Ronald Reagan’s interventions with Iran) — Trump returned to Eagle Claw in response to a Sanger attempt to understand Trump’s “Remote Control” occupation of Venezuela. This came in a passage where Sanger, suffering from normalcy bias, attempted to probe how Trump planned to impose order on Venezuela (Trump had earlier responded to a Tyler Pager question, in one of the very few pieces of real news in the interview, that he would be running Venezuela “much longer” than a year).

Trump didn’t want to talk about occupation; he wanted to talk about which of his quick strikes was the most important.

David E. Sanger

Each one of those, sir, was a one-off, you know, attack, where you could attack and then retreat. You are now in the middle of an occupation —

President Trump

But let me ask you a question: Of the four things that we talked about —

David E. Sanger

A remote control.

President Trump

— and I did other stuff — which is the most important? Al-Baghdadi, Suleimani, this one or the Iran nuclear attack?

David E. Sanger

I think people would probably disagree on that, but I think a lot of people would argue that anything that set back Iran from getting a nuclear weapon may have been the most important.

President Trump

I would say. And yet this seems to get more — more interest in this one than the other three.

Sanger attempted to return to the question of occupation, but Trump didn’t realize at first that Sanger is talking about the occupation, not just the quick strike.

David E. Sanger

But this has got more complication for you —

President Trump

Very complicated.

David E. Sanger

Because you’re going to have years —

President Trump

Oh, I see, you mean future complication.

David E. Sanger

— future — you’re going to have years in which you’re going to have to —

Tyler Pager

You said it’s going to be more than a year.

David E. Sanger

Yeah, you’re going to have to decide: Am I sending in troops?

[Mr. Trump speaks briefly off the record.]

Tyler Pager

Mr. President, on the record, just the —

[There is cross-talk.]

Whatever got said off the record, it distracted from Sanger’s focus on the occupation, and Pager returned to issues better understood as Trump’s psyche: his confidence, his boasts (repeated elsewhere in the interview, including to explain the huge budget deficits he caused with tax cuts) that he single-handedly rebuilt the military in his first term.

Tyler Pager

On the success of the Maduro operation. Does it mean — give you confidence? Or does it mean you’re going to pursue future military action against Mexico or Colombia or other countries in the Caribbean?

President Trump

No, but it — I didn’t need confidence. I have a lot of confidence in my people, in my military. I built the military. Remember this: Our military, when I took over in my first term, was a mess. I rebuilt the entire military, and now I’m doing it even more so. So, our military’s great. And more importantly, we’re the best soldiers.

Sanger persisted, imagining that Trump, who has never studied a day in his life, studied other occupations before deciding to do his Venezuela occupation on the cheap.

David E. Sanger

Did you study some other occupations? Japan, Iraq, others?

President Trump

Yes, yes. I studied, I studied —

David E. Sanger

And what — what lesson did you draw from that, that we should know —

President Trump

That it’s highly risky.

David E. Sanger

— for Venezuela?

President Trump

That’s what I do.

David E. Sanger

OK, so —

President Trump

I looked at — I looked at some of the attacks. I studied the Carter attack. It was a disaster. I would have never done it that way.

It took Sanger some time before he figured out Trump can’t even conceive of the occupation. Trump was still talking about the quick strike attack and contemplating how it could have ended like it did for Jimmy Carter, in ignominy.

David E. Sanger

You were talking about the attack. I was asking about the occupations that followed —

President Trump

You know, they had — they had a — they had a sandstorm. Did you know that? And they decided to go forward. We would go back, and let’s hit it three days later. They wanted to go forward, and they said, keep going. Helicopters don’t work well in the sand.

Karoline Leavitt

Sir, do you want to show them the renovations?

And that’s when Karoline Leavitt, who had been trying to end the entire interview, instead distracted Trump, like one would a toddler, with a topic she knows he loves, his renovations.

Here’s your binky, Donald.

NYT did a grave disservice by sane washing this interview; indeed, Trump betrayed his fundamental vulnerability elsewhere in the interview.

Because what it shows is that Trump is literally like a toddler knocking over the Monopoly board because he’s frustrated with the rules. No matter how Sanger attempts to normalize it, Trump’s foreign policy is not (as Sanger fancies) a normal second term investment in legacy.

Rather, Donald Trump is invading sovereign foreign countries, without even the ability to consider the years-long aftermath, out of a psychological need.