President Donald Trump spent much of last week whining about not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and threatening to steal Greenland. His mewling included a Jan. 18 text to the prime minister of Norway written in a tone reminiscent of a middle school breakup note.

“Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace,” the head of the most powerful nation in the world wrote, adding that he was still, like, peace’s BFF.

Trump had enough time to attend a football game, but he had to be chided by the press before acknowledging the life and legacy of a genuine American peacemaker, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

When he took his show on the road to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, Trump unleashed a rambling, reckless and racially tinged speech that has many observers calling him out for echoing White Replacement Theory talking points.

It was far from the first time Trump has race-baited and gleefully dehumanized immigrants and threatened to deport American citizens who question his actions. His latest diatribe at Davos should have appalled even his most obsequious congressional lackeys, but of course that’s not what happened.

After he finished ridiculing our allies, vilifying immigrants, repeatedly confusing Greenland with Iceland and boasting of his Scottish-German lineage, Trump then backpedaled on the Greenland heist, canceled his latest tariff threat and declared victory.

As if his speech had never happened, he enthused on Truth Social, “Based upon a very productive meeting that I have had with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region.”

Compare Trump’s diatribe to the powerful rebuke delivered by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and you’ll be reminded not only of how far Trump has fallen, but also how unimpressed even our best allies are by his bluster and blather. One line that will leave a mark: “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”

Another worth remembering: “We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield it together.”

When it comes to building meaningful alliances, Trump is Nero with a blowtorch. Meanwhile, the country’s economy sputters under his hyperbolic sleight of hand, his $1 billion-a-seat “Board of Peace” side hustle founders, his placations of Russia haven’t slowed aggression against Ukraine and his Justice Department is holding back 99 percent of the Epstein pedophile investigation files.

Only Trump can make a peace prize a punchline.

King knew it was much more than that.

In 1964, the same year of his cross-country journey, King made a brief stop in Las Vegas and brought two audiences to their feet with his clarion call for nonviolent protest and racial justice. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize later that year for his tireless dedication to ending racial inequity and improving civil rights in a nation that touts itself as a place where “all men are created equal.”

King accepted the honor on Dec. 10 in Oslo, Norway, in the name of the peaceful movement he inspired and led. His acceptance speech lasted approximately 12 minutes and is well worth reading and watching. It will remind you who King was — and who Trump is not.

Excerpting King’s words doesn’t do them full justice, but some lines jump off the page:

“Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

“I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.”

“I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

Of all the words this lover of peace spoke that day, his final lines are the most apropos for our purposes:

“I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners — all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty — and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.”

Genuine brotherhood and peace more precious than diamonds or silver or gold?

Donald Trump would call such a man a rube.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader’s Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.