“'Trump's deal with Greenland stands in perfect contrast to his friends-and-family diplomacy'”, 1 October 2026 (Photo via Le Monde — the original report)
As it ran on the front
Today we are making an American diplomatic deal that went through the regular channels, which is not something this kitchen is known for. You will need three governments, a mining company already seated at the table, and a signature carrying no family name.
You will need Denmark, Greenland and the United States, a US-based company that had already bought into a Greenland rare-earth mine, and a French newspaper column that noticed how rare this recipe is for the man usually running the kitchen at home.…
The Poet Rare. I am composing four lines on a government doing the ordinary thing, and I shall need the good glasses.
Begin on the Friday. The president announced on Truth Social that the United States had reached an agreement giving it what he called permanent control of Greenland's security.
The New York Post had the rest of the recipe waiting under the lid: seventeen days before that Friday, the company had already bought into a Greenland mining concern set to produce more than a third of the world's rare-earth magnet supply outside China.
The Fixer Magnets. There is a margin in magnets if you are seated first; we could use one on the kitty.
By the Sunday, Danish and international commentators were calling it a repackaging, one journalist's word, of long-standing agreements dressed up to claim a win.
The Punk Repackaging. We tried that on the boiler. It is still the boiler.
Four days after the announcement, on the 22nd, Denmark, Greenland and the United States signed the agreement itself, negotiated by the book.
The Hippie Book. Everything is written down somewhere. The lentils are nearly done and nobody has thanked the stove.
By the 24th, the Washington Examiner noted the deal had been reached despite the president's own tactics and rhetoric, not because of them.
Le Monde, which is what they have here for this sort of noticing, has it as "the perfect contrast to his friends-and-family diplomacy," negotiated "by the book, to everyone's benefit." At home the same agreement had already gone out, four days earlier, as "permanent control," on Truth Social.
You will be looking for the names that usually season a deal like this. There are none in it; that is the compliment Le Monde is paying it, and the reason this dish reached the front page at all.
Take it by both ends and look underneath. The mining company was seated at the table before the deal was signed, not after; the signature arrived to a table already laid.
It serves Denmark, Greenland and the United States, who signed it, and the company already seated when they did. Nobody at this table paid for being early.
🍺
“They let a company buy the mine first, then throw a nice normal-looking deal on top so the French papers call it refreshing. The rare earths were already locked up before anybody picked up a pen. The deal looks clean because the money moved before the cameras did.”
“This is exactly what people wanted — Greenland secured the normal way, through real diplomats, none of that family-business stuff folks complain about. Sure, a US company picked up the mine a couple weeks earlier, but that's just smart business getting ahead of smart diplomacy. Did I say "ahead of"? That's — that's not what I meant.”
DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team in April 2025 and ordered inconsistent investigations closed - while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
Unlike talks led by the US president's non-diplomat confidants, the September 22 agreement between Denmark, Greenland and the US was negotiated by the book, to everyone's benefit, writes Le Monde columnist Gilles Paris.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
