Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted President Donald Trump’s push to seize Greenland had nothing to do with his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize, even though the president himself cited the snub in a text to Norway’s prime minister.
Bessent brushed off the idea that Trump’s Nobel disappointment played any role in U.S. efforts to take control of the self-governing Danish territory, framing Greenland as a long-standing goal.
“I think it’s a complete canard that there’s any kind of an equivalence with the Nobel Prize,” Bessent told CNBC during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday. “This has been on the president’s mind since his first term.”
That characterization directly conflicts with Trump’s own explanation.
In a text message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, revealed by PBS on Monday, Trump wrote that he no longer felt an “obligation to think purely of Peace” after missing out on the award, an honor decided by an independent committee, not the Norwegian government.
