His staff had printed out a 31-page list of his accomplishments, but President Trump had other ideas for how he wanted to mark the anniversary of his return to office.
Standing at the lectern in the White House’s James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Mr. Trump flipped quickly through the paperwork and tossed it on the floor.
Then he held court — airing old grievances, attacking perceived enemies, threatening allies — for roughly one hour 45 minutes.
“I think God is very proud of the job I’ve done,” Mr. Trump said as he neared the end of his remarks.
It was a revealing window into Mr. Trump’s shifting worldview, filled with perceived slights and injustices that he suggested were changing his approach to policy. The meandering, sometimes rambling, remarks jumped from topic to topic, including a story about his prowess as a Little League player, and stretched on longer than Mr. Trump’s record-breaking one hour and 40 minute joint address to Congress.
Mr. Trump explained why he had tied his recent threats to take over Greenland to his resentment that he had not won the Nobel Peace Prize. He had told Norway’s prime minister: “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace.”
“Don’t let anyone tell you that Norway doesn’t control the shots, OK? It’s in Norway!” Mr. Trump told reporters on Tuesday. The award is, in fact, awarded by the independent Norwegian Nobel Institute.
“They’ll say, ‘We have nothing to do with it.’ It’s a joke. They’ve lost such prestige,” Mr. Trump said of Norway’s government.
The president was asked how far he was willing to go to acquire Greenland.
“You’ll find out,” he replied tersely.
“We have a lot of meetings scheduled on Greenland,” Mr. Trump said of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which he was scheduled to attend on Wednesday. He added: “I think things are going to work out pretty well, actually.”
He also suggested that his efforts to acquire more territory may not be over.
Mr. Trump was asked about his previous threats to take control of the Panama Canal. The president said that it was “sort of” still on the table.
“I don’t want to tell you that,” Mr. Trump said. “Sort of. I must say. Sort of. That’s sort of on the table.”
For his anniversary remarks, the briefing room was packed and frigid. Reporters jammed into the walkways leading to seats, and doors were left open, letting the cold winter air blow in.
Mr. Trump appeared to be excited about the number of reporters he had attracted.
“Wow, that’s a big crowd. That’s a lot of people. I think it’s like a record,” he said.
He was not happy with his press coverage. He suggested that newspapers had buried positive stories about him, and that the media had negatively affected voters’ views of the strength of the economy. At one point, he suggested that he might need new public relations staff members who were better at getting his message out.
Mr. Trump also said that he had wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Trump, but that the idea had been rejected by his aides. Then the president said he was just joking.
“My people don’t rebuff me too much,” he said.
The president continued to attack those he viewed as his enemies, including his predecessor in office, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and his handling of classified documents after he left the White House in 2021.
Reading from papers in front of him, Mr. Trump promoted his purge of what he called Mr. Biden’s “handpicked, radical-left, Marxist prosecutors. ”
In addition to the firings, many career prosecutors have left in protest over the Justice Department’s effort to investigate Mr. Trump’s critics, including the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent in Minnesota earlier this month.
He also boasted about his success in shutting down the flow of illegal immigration at the southwestern border.
The first 52 items on the White House staff’s list of accomplishments dealt with immigration and border security.
Still, Mr. Trump said he wanted to be flexible with businesses that needed immigrant workers.
“When you have good people on the farm or good people in hotels and everything else, we want to work with them as much as we can,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s stance changed when he talked about Renee Good, the woman who was shot and killed by an ICE agent.
The president said that he had learned that Ms. Good’s father was a Trump supporter, and that he felt badly about her death. The administration had accused Ms. Good, without evidence, of being a domestic terrorist.
Mr. Trump said he hoped Ms. Good’s father would remain a supporter.
“I hope he still is, but I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said.
He added: “A lot of people, they said, ‘Oh, he loves you.’ I hope he still feels that way.”
Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
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