International Glance
One day during his first term, Donald Trump summoned a top aide to discuss a new idea. “Trump called me down to the Oval Office,” John Bolton, national security adviser in 2018, told the Guardian. “He said a prominent businessman had just suggested the US buy Greenland.”
It was an extraordinary proposal. And it originated from a longtime friend of the president who would go on to acquire business interests in the Danish territory.
The businessman, Bolton learned, was Ronald Lauder. Heir to a makeup fortune – the global cosmetics brand Estée Lauder – he had known Trump, a fellow wealthy New Yorker, for more than 60 years.
Bolton said he discussed the Greenland proposition with Lauder. After the billionaire’s intervention, a White House team began to explore ways to increase US sway in the vast Arctic territory controlled by Denmark.
Trump’s renewed pursuit of Lauder’s idea during his second term is typical of how the president operates, Bolton said. “Bits of information that he hears from friends, he takes them as truth and you can’t shake his opinion.”
Discussions are reportedly under way within Donald Trump’s administration about the US possibly granting asylum to Jewish people from the UK, according to the Telegraph, citing the US president’s personal lawyer.
While President Donald Trump might have the medal in hand, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado cannot be redistributed to him, the Nobel Foundation said in a statement following Machado's move to present the president with the award at their Jan. 15 meeting at the White House.
An explosion of unknown origin in a high-rise residential building in Kharkiv early Saturday left at least two people dead and others injured, city officials said.
IIn a rare rebuke of his most important ally, President Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the so-called Board of Peace ‘was not coordinated with Israel and is contrary to its policy’.
