World of Politics with Harry McGee

I remember years ago reading a wonderful travel piece on Greenland written by A.A. Gill about a place many times larger than Ireland, but with a tiny population of just 57,000.

Its capital, Nuuk, he said, looked more like a sleepy provincial seaside town. Gill opened by describing Greenland as a place pilots point out on transatlantic flights.

“If you look out your right-hand window now, passengers, you can see Greenland,” they would proclaim.

Gill would fall asleep, have his meal, watch a movie, fall asleep again — and when he looked out the window, they were still passing over Greenland.

Vast, but almost empty at the same time – and Donald Trump wants it.

He talks about Chinese and Russian vessels circling the island like sharks, ready to pounce on its precious resources. And there are precious resources — critical and rare minerals — though they are extremely difficult to extract, buried deep beneath the permafrost that covers much of this icebound northern land.

Trump mentioned Greenland during his first term, but he began talking about it repeatedly after starting his second term last year. In recent months, those claims have reached a kind of cacophony.

This is a kind of politics I’ve never experienced before — so far outside the realm of ordinary experience that everything feels unreal. It’s like a Lewis Carroll novel: Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass.

It’s as if we’ve all followed Alice down the rabbit hole, believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast every day. Trump is Tweedledum and Tweedledee. He’s the Mad Hatter.

He’s the rude, extraordinary Humpty Dumpty. But mostly, he’s the Queen of Hearts — with decision-making and logic that defy all credulity. Off with their heads. In the past week, it’s reached a peak.

He has threatened eight European countries with tariffs, including the UK. He has taken affront at Denmark, criticising it over Greenland — a sovereign territory it administers — and he has threatened to raise tariffs to 25 per cent by June 1 if his territorial demands are not met.

Pictured: Nuuk…sleepy snow capital at centre of global storm.