By D.G. Martin

North Carolina is in the news again thanks to President Donald Trump and his interest in acquiring new territory for the United States.

According to an article in the March 15 edition of the Wall Street Journal by Josh Dawsey titled “The Painting That Explains Trump’s Foreign Policy,” Trump and the speaker of the house, Mike Johnson, worked out a deal to exchange a White House portrait of Thomas Jefferson for a congressional portrait of James K. Polk, who served as president only one term (1845-1849).

What is the North Carolina connection?

Polk grew up near Charlotte. After his family moved to Tennessee, Polk came back to attend the University of North Carolina before returning to Tennessee for a career in politics.

Trump has explained he admires Polk because he served as a champion of “manifest destiny” and who as president through annexation and war acquired the Oregon Territory, Texas, California and much of the American Southwest. “He got a lot of land,” Trump said to White House visitors after showing the painting, featuring a steely-eyed Polk against a dark red background.

Polk expanded the U.S. more than any other president. Now his portrait hangs in the Oval Office, a signal that President Trump’s ambition to take over Canada, Greenland and other territory is more than just talk.

According to Dawsey, President Trump called Speaker Mike Johnson with a proposed deal last month: I’ll give you one of the White House’s portraits of Thomas Jefferson if you give me the one of James Polk hanging in the U.S. Capitol.

Johnson agreed, and a painting of the 11th president, who oversaw the largest expansion of U.S. territory in history, was moved across Washington and now hangs in the Oval Office, people familiar with the matter said.

“The Journal article noted that one of the most striking features of Trump’s second term has been his thirst for expanding American territory. Since taking office, he has said that Canada is fleecing Americans on trade and should be made the 51st state; that the U.S. should retake control of the Panama Canal to ward off Chinese influence; and that the war in Gaza should be ended by the U.S. taking over the territory and rebuilding it. Trump has also talked about acquiring Greenland from Denmark.

“The actual inhabitants of all these places have loudly rejected Trump’s claims, but he has persisted in making them, even as they threaten to derail other American priorities on trade and security. Expanding U.S. territory is part of the vision of a new ‘Golden Age’ Trump has promised for his second term, which he says will restore American dominance abroad and usher in a new period of prosperity at home.

“The predecessor who now inspires Trump in vivid oil paint served only one term, dying shortly after he left office in 1849. But in four years Polk nearly doubled the territory of the U.S. On the northern border, Polk’s supporters rallied around the expansionist slogan

‘54°40 or Fight,’ demanding the U.S. take over the entire Pacific Northwest up to that latitude, then the southern boundary of Russian Alaska, even if it meant going to war with Britain. Instead, in 1846 Polk negotiated a treaty that established the U.S.’s northern border at the 49th parallel.

“In the Southwest, Polk annexed Texas and fought the Mexican-American War, which ended in Mexico ceding more than 500,000 square miles to the U.S., including all of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming, in exchange for $15 million.

“It was “one of the largest land grabs in world history,” said historian Hampton Sides, who wrote about Polk in his book “Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West.”

“He wanted it all, and he got it all in one term, which was kind of extraordinary if you think about it.”