BRIAN READE: For the sake of the world, it is time to cease out-of-control bully Trump

The American president’s obsession with stealing foreign real estate is growing and we should all know where it’s heading, says Brian Reade, so we need to hit back in the language he understands

There are so many questions about Trump’s hunger to swallow Greenland, it’s hard to know where to start. Is he playing a game to distract attention from his illegal coup in Venezuela and the Epstein files? If so, how long before he winks at a Fox News camera and says “well, as all those Eskimo Joes know, you gotta be Inuit to win it, right?” Has he given up on the Nobel Peace Prize and now wants the prize of stealing more foreign real estate than any US president?

Are his poll ratings at home so dire he needs big foreign wins, so has changed his America First policy to America First Threatens You Like A Mafia Boss Then Takes Your Wealth? Can we expect him to make Greenland’s leaders an offer they can’t refuse, which if snubbed, will ensure they sleep with the seals? And at what point do European leaders, or the Coalition of the Willing Lickspittles, stop fawning over this grotesque egomaniacal bully and fight back?

Europeans more than most know where this is heading. Throw Greenland in with Venezuela and the threats to Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Canada and it sounds horribly close to singing from Hitler’s 1930s songsheet, who justified invading nearby countries because of his nation’s need for “Lebensraum”.

Trump claims merely to be carrying out The Monroe Doctrine against foreign interference in the Western hemisphere, renaming it The Donroe Doctrine. But it’s more the Don Corleone Doctrine. America as a Superpower Mafia with him as the Boss. It’s true the likes of Britain, France and Germany are on dodgy ground lecturing others about mafia behaviour. It was only 141 years ago at The Berlin Conference that Africa was divided up among 14 European nations, drawing new borders without any African input, leading to mass theft of resources, untold subjugation and tribal wars that still persist.

And European leaders have encouraged the demon in Trump by laying on the flattery with a trowel. Think Nato secretary general Mark Rutte calling him “daddy” and Keir Starmer’s crawling to him with a letter from the King offering a second state visit. But the time has come, for the sake of the world, if not for Europe’s own dignity, to get off their knees and draw a line in the Greenland snow with this out-of-control mobster.

The UK and EU possess 520 million people, most of them wealthy in global terms, making it far and away America’s most valuable export market. Tell Trump that any attempt to take Greenland by force will lead to a continent-wide block on American trade, a ban on American tourists and a boycott of this year’s World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, plus closer diplomatic ties with China. And when he explodes on Truth Central they need to hit back in the language he understands.

One of them should quote what Nevada Senator Patrick Geary told Michael Corleone in Godfather II, when the mobster demanded a bigger slice of his state’s casino trade, by telling the entire Trump team on Zoom: “I don’t like your kind of people. I don’t like to see you come here with your oily hair, dressed up in those silk suits, and try to pass yourselves off as decent Americans. I despise your masquerade. The dishonest way you pose yourself. Yourself and your whole f***ing family.” Then tell him it’s nothing personal. Just business.