Trump’s Greenland delusions of grandeur are based on a deceiving map

Donald Trump is a megalomaniac with Putinesque delusions of grandeur. Yet despite his obvious ability to connect with less-educated Americans (winning non-college-educated white voters 66-32), he’s also very stupid. 

And that’s likely at the root of his obsession with Greenland (and to a lesser extent, Canada). 

Everything about Trump’s life has revolved around being the biggest, the greatest, the largest. He clearly has his eye on his historical legacy, and no president is remembered for his tax cuts for billionaires. He wants something that would cement his place in the history books, and a geographic expansion fits the bill. 

In his first term, Trump offered to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland, which many read as more of his usual racism—trading brown Puerto Ricans for white Greenlanders. Yet there is another plausible explanation, and it’s all about size.

Look at how big Greenland is! Imagine slapping Ol’ Glory on all that! Why, no one could look at a map without thinking, “THANK YOU, SIR, MR. TRUMP” while pantomiming a patriotic salute! 

The thing is, that map, which we all have deeply imprinted in our brains, is a lie. It’s a bald-faced lie that not only provides a distorted view of the world, but continues the ages-old tradition of minimizing the southern hemisphere. 

This map is called the Mercator Projection. It distorts the size of land mass the further away from the equator one gets in order to maintain a uniform square grid—helpful for 18th-century navigation. 

The Northern Hemisphere is further away from the equator, compared to the Southern Hemisphere, hence the exaggerated view of the north. 

Look at Russia. It looks enormous! Could you believe that in reality all of Russia could fit inside Africa? Take a look at the actual size of countries:

The U.S., Alaska, Canada, Europe, China, Scandinavia, and Russia are all significantly smaller than the Mercator Projection would have us believe. Russia looks hilariously puny in reality. Africa and Brazil look smaller in comparison, while the Mercator Projection displays them accurately. While you might think that Canada is much bigger than the U.S., in reality, they  are just about equal: Canada is 3.855 million square miles, while the U.S. is 3.810 million square miles. Crazy, huh? 

And then there’s Greenland, which is legitimately a big chunk of real estate, but nowhere near the map-dominating feature that has Trump salivating about conquest and glory. 

Of course, none of this matters in any real way. Trump isn’t getting Greenland. But it was a nice excuse for me to write about a topic (the Mercator Projection) that has always fascinated me, and which few people know about. And it’s funny to me that Trump’s megalomania might be fueled by a distorted map.