Donald Trump is like a dog, pissing on things to claim ownership of them.

His latest is threatening staunch American allies with tariffs if they don’t support the forceful US annexation of Greenland. “We need Greenland for security,” he says. Does that sound familiar? It should. It’s what Vladimir Putin said just before ordering Russian troops to attack Ukraine. That’s the same Ukraine war, by the way, that Donald Trump said—during the 2024 election—that he would end within 24 hours if he won the election. We’re still waiting for that.

Long ago, I wondered if Donald Trump was a stooge working for Putin. Now I realize he’s simply doing his best to emulate Putin. Indeed, Putin gets all this Trumpian love for free.

Trump’s only morality is self-aggrandizement. Everything he does as president seems to have the same goal: to put more money in his pocket, or to put his name on things. In that respect, he’s not unlike a dog, pissing on things to claim ownership. The last major US territorial acquisition was the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. The US acquired Puerto Rico and Guam due to the Spanish–American War (in 1898; we also got the Philippines, which became an independent country in 1946). And the US purchased part of the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917.

So what happens if the US manages to “acquire” Greenland? He becomes the first president since World War II to increase the geographic size of the United States. Indeed, he also gets to claim to be the president who acquired the largest parcel of territory for the US, and if you’ve listened to any of his speeches, you know “first” and “biggest” are among his holy words. (For comparison, Alaska is about 665,000 square miles, and the Louisiana Purchase [which the US got from France in 1803] involved about 828,000 square miles, while Greenland measures about 836,000 square miles.)

Any other president would measure success in terms of national peace and prosperity; the people’s health and wealth; happiness, amity, and community. But how does Trump measure success? With crowns on his head and dollars in his pocket.

He was talking about his “Board of Peace” this week. It’s key feature? Each member has to pay $1 billion, which he as chairman gets to control. The gold decorations dripping all over the White House are not impressive; they are there to tell him he controls vast sums of wealth. But he looks at the truly wealthy—Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Elon Musk—and he feels his inferiority complex, because his wealth is not on that level. So he keeps grifting, keeps taking what he can.

The first load of Venezuelan has recently been sold, and the proceeds of that sale wound up in a Qatari bank. Why Qatar? Why not the US? Or, for that matter, why not Venezuela? Because this way, Trump has control over that money, can disburse it as he will. It has suddenly become his money.

The Trump Kennedy Center. The Trump Ballroom. The Trump Battleship. The Trump Institute of Peace. The Trump Savings Account. The Trump Special Visa for Rich People. The Trump Southern Border Boulevard in Palm Beach. His face on the National Park pass. And on, and on…

It’s time we told Donald Trump to piss off.