As part of an extended riff on his animosity toward Europe and the NATO alliance, Donald Trump did express a degree of gratitude toward the traditional U.S. allies about a development that only happened in the president’s imagination.

NATO members, the president asserted, “were nice enough to give us Greenland, despite all the bad talk.”

“‘Oh, he’s not going to get it,’” Trump added, mocking his critics. “We got it; we got Greenland.”

No, we didn’t.

To be sure, the rhetoric was wrong but familiar. At a campaign event in Arizona last week, the president also said that Greenland “was owned by Denmark,” but it has since been added “to our beautiful plate.” Earlier in the day, Trump posted an item to his social media platform in which he referred to “our new and beautiful Greenland,” suggesting U.S. ownership of the Arctic island.

Five days earlier, the president headlined a rally in New York, where he boasted to attendees, “I also, by the way, got Greenland. I hope you’re happy about that.”

I’m not in a position to say with certainty whether Trump is deliberately trying to mislead the public or is genuinely confused about something even he ought to be able to understand. But to the extent that people might be tempted to believe the president, it’s probably worth emphasizing that the United States didn’t “get” Greenland; it’s not “ours”; and at no point was it added to our “plate.” As The New York Times reported in September:

On Tuesday, he signed a document that paves the way to expanding the U.S. military presence on the island, opening new bases. But it explicitly stops short of conveying any territory to the United States. And no one — especially Denmark, which governs the vast but mostly empty space — wanted to emphasize that point, for fear that Mr. Trump might renounce the agreement he had just hailed as “tremendous for Europe and for the United States.”

For Mr. Trump, it was a major retreat. He first raised the possibility of buying Greenland during his first term and never let go of the idea.

I can appreciate why the president finds this embarrassing. He did, after all, make a “100%” guarantee to Americans that he would acquire the island — nine months before he settled for a deal that gave him what he already had.

Joseph Cirincione, the vice chair of the Center for International Policy and a longtime expert on nuclear policy, described the deal as a “complete farce” designed to do little more than “soothe Trump’s unstable ego.”

The more the president peddles nonsense about his imaginary acquisition of Greenland, the more obvious it becomes that he’s still tending to his unstable ego after one of the more notable foreign policy fiascos of his second term.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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