Althouse: Taste the delicious penguin bait.

January 24, 2026

Taste the delicious penguin bait.

Embrace the penguin. pic.twitter.com/kKlzwd3Rx7
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 23, 2026

40 comments:

n.n said...: Greenland was once a green field. It's glacier farms must be anthropogenic.; 1/24/26, 11:14 AM
tim maguire said...: Has Trump decided Antartica should be the 51st state?; 1/24/26, 11:14 AM
Narr said...: Penguins are not Arctic birds. Other than that, nice troll.; 1/24/26, 11:14 AM
john mosby said...: Over under on how many lefties will scream "Trump doesn't even know penguins are in the Antarctic!!!!"? CC, JSM; 1/24/26, 11:15 AM
Temujin said...: Not a Somali flag in sight.; 1/24/26, 11:17 AM
Humperdink said...: Tim Walz killed another one of his constituents today.; 1/24/26, 11:22 AM
Christopher B said...: If we can have Christmas Dinosaurs we can put penguins in the Arctic.; 1/24/26, 11:23 AM
FullMoon said...: "Humperdink said...
Tim Walz killed another one of his constituents today."

Left will claim the gun was planted, and some will believe it.; 1/24/26, 11:25 AM
rhhardin said...: A man never stands taller than when he stoops to help a robot.; 1/24/26, 11:27 AM
Big Mike said...: Penguins are exclusively birds of the Southern Hemisphere. If you want a Greenland bird capable of using its wings to “fly” underwater try a puffin. For myself, I’d have done the cartoon with Donald Trump on a dogsled, but pulled by two polar bears.; 1/24/26, 11:31 AM
Narr said...: Also, penguins don't leave footprints like people do. Other than that, nice troll.; 1/24/26, 11:32 AM
jim said...: But why?; 1/24/26, 11:32 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Penguins are not Arctic birds. Other than that, nice troll."

I wouldn't say "Other than that." I think the mislocation of the beloved bird is deliberate. It is the troll. So many Trump opponents will carry the virus for him just so they can rush to supply info they think people need. But people either already know or will feel they don't care.; 1/24/26, 11:37 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: Hilarious that Althouse has to explain the picture. I thought the picture was real - don't all penguins carry USA flags? And then realized, wait, this is supposed to be Greenland. So, I called fake.; 1/24/26, 11:42 AM
paminwi said...: Greenlanders need to get their heads out of their asses. Work with the US or you’ll get the Russians and/Chinese who won’t give a shit what Greenlanders have to say.; 1/24/26, 11:44 AM
Bob Boyd said...: There’s a mushroom in Greenland that makes you see penguins.; 1/24/26, 11:50 AM
Rosalyn C. said...: From the Antarctic to the Arctic, Trump is loved. LOL; 1/24/26, 11:52 AM
boatbuilder said...: Trump is not endemic to Greenland either. It's an international delegation.; 1/24/26, 11:52 AM
boatbuilder said...: Greenland lacks proper border control.; 1/24/26, 11:53 AM
Johnula said...: Big Mike said...
"Penguins are exclusively birds of the Southern Hemisphere..."

Not quite: One species, the Galapagos Penguin, is regularly found north of the equator. It has adapted to warm equatorial waters thanks to the cool Humboldt and Cromwell currents.; 1/24/26, 11:57 AM
traditionalguy said...: The Pres is outflanking Red China’s new ally called Canada, speaking of which has DJT proposed swapping Minnesota for Alberta yet? Remember the only issue in Canadian politics is which candidate hates the United States the most.; 1/24/26, 12:31 PM
Narr said...: I know that the Prof knows that they know, and the bird was part of the setup.

I just like to show off my penguin expertise once in a while.; 1/24/26, 12:37 PM
Big Mike said...: @Johnula, I stand corrected. They have some really unusual animals in the Galapagos.

I still prefer a picture of Trump driving a dogsled pulled by polar bears.; 1/24/26, 12:48 PM
bagoh20 said...: Where are they headed?; 1/24/26, 12:49 PM
Achilles said...: bagoh20 said...

Where are they headed?

To the Dysprosium mine.; 1/24/26, 1:16 PM
Ann Althouse said...: “ Hilarious that Althouse has to explain the picture. I thought the picture was real - don't all penguins carry USA flags? And then realized, wait, this is supposed to be Greenland. So, I called fake.”

You are misunderstanding my comment. When I said mislocation of the bird, I wasn’t saying that the bird is Photoshopped into a fake image. I was saying a penguin was imagined to belong in Greenland. That was a troll because it motivated people who think they’re adding something by telling us that there aren’t penguins in the northern hemisphere.; 1/24/26, 1:17 PM
Narr said...: I said the Arctic, and stand by my comment!; 1/24/26, 1:33 PM
Enigma said...: The now-extinct Great Auk was a penguin-like bird in the North Atlantic. If this fantasy image actually presents an Auk, it would mean that Trump successfully brought a species from the dead.

Shades of Jurassic Park, but with a messianic Trump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk; 1/24/26, 1:36 PM
Big Mike said...: @Enigma, Trump brought the Republican Party back from the dead, and that strikes me as harder.; 1/24/26, 1:58 PM
Ronald J. Ward said...: Someone should take Trump to Alaska, tell him it’s Greenland and that now the U.S. owns it. Even do a ribbon cutting to add to his trophies.

And yeah, I know a penguin isn’t an Alaska natural bird.; 1/24/26, 2:46 PM
Narr said...: Puffins, Great Auks, what about the rare Arctic Raccoon?; 1/24/26, 3:40 PM
D.D. Driver said...: Put a top hat on the figure on the right and they both look like The Penguin.; 1/24/26, 4:02 PM
Not Illinois Resident said...: Americans flying in to Copenhagen's airport should wonder whether customs agent will give them a hard time before deciding whether to allow them Entry.; 1/24/26, 4:21 PM
Rocco said...: Ok, I can believe that the photo of the president walking side by side with an undetermined species of flightless cold weather fowl holding a US flag is real.

But the Greenland flag is clearly photoshopped.; 1/24/26, 4:59 PM
john mosby said...: Remember the Xmas special - I think it's Santa Claus Is Comin To Town - where young Kris Kringle teaches a baby penguin to walk? While singing "Put One Foot In Front Of The Other?"

It would be great if some AI master made a video of Trump and a penguin doing that. CC, JSM; 1/24/26, 7:45 PM
Kakistocracy said...: Trump's personal penchant for personality-based presidential-led unilateralism is aimed at breaking apart multilateralism wherever it is found. Much of the Republican party has always been nationalistically unilateral; they dislike intensely multilateral institutions. Trump is tightly aligned with the worst of twentieth century Republican orthodoxy.

Trump sees a Great Power view of the world as natural and desirable because these are the powers that can exercise unilateral power--his personal vanity elixir of choice. Unilateral power can only be managed if each Great Power tacitly agrees to limit exercise of unilateral power to a sphere of influence. The Big Boys divide up the neighborhood. Civilizational advance need not apply in this boys' treehouse!

NATO is the most successful and longest lasting multilateral institution functioning ever. Wrecking its foundation definitively says the era of multilateralism is over and the age of unilateralism has begun.

This is a fantasy; the world Trump thinks he inhabits doesn't exist.

The world is highly integrated and improves through ever-improving levels of cooperation. Unilateralism is a declinist philosophy masquerading as macho strength in the reactionary mind.

Where does it all go? Humankind adapts to new levels of higher cooperative effectiveness or it gets stressed to a much lower level of existence by migrating into a self-induced extinction event. Only the most adaptable will survive. That will probably include the most successfully cooperative.

The entire global society is being subjected to the universal upheaval of powerful climate change. "Great powers" are almost an irrelevance here since "great" is powerless in face of the force of this new universal change. What's physically going on in Greenland is vivid proof that the fossil fuel-obsessed Donald Trump is clueless to real change going on in the world--the time-tested ticket to great nation leadership failure.

The trade routes stress the integration of a highly cooperative capital-based, trade-functioning world economy.

Of the three great unilateral powers, China is the only one pursuing national advancement by expanding trade and commerce based on an integrating and expanding global economy. Russia is a transgressive low-value added autocracy going backwards. The US is retreating, withdrawing, burning bridges, and otherwise withdrawing from mutually beneficial and cooperative international relations.

Europe has an opportunity to come together as a commercial superpower and earn the rewards of expanding international cooperation. It must hold off a brigand to the east but is surrounded by opportunities in every other direction. Greenland may be a signpost on the way to a better place.

In the Muslim world, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding as they have not ridden since the Second World War--from the Sahel, across the Horn of Africa and Yemen, to Iran and Pakistan. Despite over $8 trillion in wasted expenditure in Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump is embarking on a greatly expanded "forever defense budget" to replace the "forever wars" with a new and expanded and even more hopeless crusade in the Middle East. His son-in-law parades a $30 billion Gaza reconstruction plan (with few Palestinians in it) presumably to be funded by the cash-stuffed, rotten-borough satrapies of the Middle East while Trump himself like a Middle East potentate sits in a throne of his own design atop the Board of Peace! The fulsomeness of the delusion is astounding. The imperial capital of Washington is rapidly reaching its logical absurdity, disconnected by corrupt money from the realities of the world and its own citizens out in the states.

One can presume that America is heading for a big turning point or a spectacular failure -- probably very Trump-like.; 1/24/26, 8:10 PM
le Douanier said...: Can any human embrace around that fatso shown here? Why would the DJT folks create an image that makes DJT look so wide/fat? Only thing worse would be if they also showed his tiny little hands.

Wait, that's not the worst. They could also show all the bruising on his hands.

Oops, still not the worst, they could also show his super fat ankle swelling.

I guess that's it. It's hard to make an image that shows the ugliness of DJT re what he does v what he looks like.; 1/24/26, 9:44 PM
Josephbleau said...: The ad hominum arguments presented above are certain to derail the proposals of the Trump administration.; 1/24/26, 10:42 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I’m stealing that rh 👆🏽; 1/25/26, 9:08 AM
Kakistocracy said...: "Now THAT’S what I call embracing the penguin."
https://bsky.app/profile/plusbleuciel.bsky.social/post/3mdb4gzjvys2y; 1/25/26, 10:43 AM

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