After a week of geopolitical chaos that appeared to put Greenland to rest, the White House revived President Donald Trump’s fixation with an AI-generated colonial fantasy.
The image, posted to the White House’s official X account, shows Trump marching across a frozen landscape toward Greenland, accompanied by a penguin inexplicably carrying an American flag.
The image’s execution appears as confused as the message. The penguin—a creature not found anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, let alone Greenland—seems to leave identical footprints as the president, despite only one of them presumably having webbed feet.
While the image is ridiculous, it is also revealing.
The post landed just days after Trump dramatically escalated his renewed push to acquire Greenland—complete with threats of using military force—before abruptly retreating under pressure from markets and allies.
Trump has talked about acquiring Greenland for years, but the fixation seemed to snowball in the lead-up to the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he framed the acquisition of the Arctic territory as a U.S. national security imperative.
“You can say ‘yes,’ and we will be very appreciative,” Trump said at Davos. “Or you can say ‘no,’ and we will remember.”
In another moment that left little room for subtlety, Trump boiled the argument down even further, declaring: “We want a piece of ice for world protection.”
The escalation stunned U.S. allies and injected fresh tension into an already strained transatlantic relationship, as leaders warned that openly floating territorial acquisition crossed a line.
“Every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great-power rivalry,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said at Davos.
“That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”
The sequence followed a now-familiar pattern. Trump opened with a maximalist demand before abruptly walking it back once markets, allies, and diplomatic reality pushed back.
Talk of ownership quietly gave way to vague talk of expanded military access and undefined “frameworks,” leaving allies to absorb the fallout.
Markets ultimately proved to be a more effective constraint than diplomacy. After tariff threats tied to Greenland negotiations rattled investors and sent stocks sliding, Trump announced progress toward an unspecified deal, prompting a rebound. This pattern has become so familiar that analysts have named it TACO, or “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
Seen in that light, the AI image reads less like a communications misfire than an accidental metaphor. It depicts a confident march into Greenland—a colonial fantasy untethered from geographic or diplomatic reality.
The penguin may be the most honest detail in the frame. It doesn’t belong in Greenland, and neither does the United States.
