Trump: “If anybody thinks that Norway doesn't control the Nobel Prize, they're just kidding. They have a board, but it's controlled by Norway, and I don't care what Norway says."pic.twitter.com/Csg46p8dvF
.@POTUS on Greenland: "We have to have it. They have to have this done. They can't protect it… Greenland is very important." pic.twitter.com/mOWJGrBlLq
Even the European right wing is rejecting this bullshit:
Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right party National Rally:
The United States is presenting us with a choice: accept dependency disguised as partnership, or act as sovereign powers capable of defending our interests.
Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right party National Rally:
The United States is presenting us with a choice: accept dependency disguised as partnership, or act as sovereign powers capable of defending our interests. When a U.S. president threatens a European territory while using trade pressure, it is not dialogue—it is coercion. And our credibility is at stake. Greenland has become a strategic pivot in a world returning to imperial logic.
Yielding today would set a dangerous precedent, exposing other European—and even French overseas—territories tomorrow. The European Union cannot remain silent. The agreement negotiated last summer must be suspended. Our anti-coercion instruments must be activated, and targeted measures adopted. This is not escalation—it is self-defense. The choice is simple: submission or sovereignty. Europe must choose freedom, responsibility, and control of its own destiny.
Not that he cares. Everything has always turned out well for him, he’s never been richer or more powerful and he believes that no one can stop him because no one ever has. Public opinion is no longer relevant.
His GOP allies may have some problems but I’m not sure they’re very worried either. They figure Trump will just do whatever’s necessary to ensure they stay in power and they’ve come to believe that Trump is magic/omnipotent so there’s no margin in trying to do it without him.
Read this NY Times article (gift link) about what has to happen, and soon, from Masha Gessen, a Russian emigre who knows what they’re talking about. We don’t have much time.
President Trump’s intensifying standoff with European leaders over the fate of Greenland prompted a sharp response from investors Tuesday morning, with the value of U.S. stocks, dollar and government bonds all falling.
The S&P 500 dropped over 1 percent as investors reacted to Mr. Trump’s increasing threat of higher tariffs on European allies unless they supported his plans for America to take control of Greenland.
Tuesday morning’s decline was the first time the index has started the day that much lower since April amid turmoil from Mr. Trump’s initial sweeping tariff threats on nearly all of America’s trading partners.
Often when stocks are roiled by geopolitical upheaval, investors flock to the safety of other U.S. assets, like the dollar or government bonds. But in a sign that investors were embracing a “sell America” trade and moving away from U.S. assets altogether, both the dollar and U.S. government debt lost value Tuesday morning.
The dollar index, which pits the currency against a basket of currencies that represent America’s major trading partners, fell 0.8 percent. The dollar weakened against every currency from the group of 10 nations, which includes the euro, British pound and Norwegian Krone.
The yield, which moves inversely to price, on the 10-year U.S. government note rose, meaning its value declined. This yield acts as one of the most important interest rates in the world by underpinning interest rates across consumer and corporate debt. The 10-year yield rose 0.1 percentage points, to 4.3 percent, its sharpest move higher so far this year, undermining the administration’s efforts to move interest rates lower.
Tuesday morning’s trading was the first chance U.S. markets had to react to Mr. Trump’s escalating threats toward Europe over the weekend with the U.S. stock market closed on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King’s Birthday.
One bright spot in the stock market came from the rising value of defense stocks. Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense company, nudged higher Tuesday morning, pushing further into record territory having risen almost 20 percent already this month.
Trump’s request to purchase land under the jurisdiction of another nation has not gone down well with the Western world. While the U.S. may be the biggest economy on the planet, patience is wearing thin among its allies, after a year of barbed back-and-forths over tariffs and military spending.
This weekend’s power flex may be a stretch too far, economists are now warning, and Trump’s weakness may prove to be America’s voracious spending habits.
Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid highlighted that Liberation Day tariffs in April were stepped back a week later, after U.S. Treasury yields saw a “scary” session as investors retreated to safety, away from American borrowing.
“Financial markets may play a big part in how this situation resolves itself,” Reid wrote in a note to clients this morning. “The main Achilles Heel of the U.S. is the huge twin deficits. So while in many ways it feels like the U.S. holds the economic cards, it doesn’t hold all the funding cards in a world that will be very disturbed by the weekend’s events.”
Investors, analysts, and world leaders have long wondered when—or if—a debt crisis would occur in one of the nations burdened by a massive deficit. While the likes of Japan, the U.K., and France are by no means balancing their books, America’s $38 trillion deficit dwarfs its counterparts. While a great deal of that debt is held by the public (including the Fed, where President Trump is also in hot water), vast sums are also owned by foreign governments and overseas investors.
This exposure—to the tune of $8 trillion—ING pointed out, may be something European leaders decide to remind the White House of. Europe being America’s largest lender “illustrates the deep interdependence between the U.S. and Europe but also shows that, at least theoretically, Europe also has leverage on the U.S.,” wrote Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro, and Bert Colijn, chief economist for the Netherlands. The duo added: “Whether in practice, Europe would really engage in a ‘Sell America Inc’ season is a completely different question. There is very little the EU could do to force European private sector investors to sell USD assets; it could only try to incentivise investments in EUR assets.”
The EU also has a weapon in its arsenal that it has yet to deploy. French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested now is the time to use the E.U.’s Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI). The tool is a set of countermeasures against any foreign powers that unduly interfere in the policy choices of the E.U. or its member states, by restricting U.S. companies from accessing the European market, banning them from bidding for government work, restricting trade, and curtailing foreign investment.
This, Goldman Sachs believes, is likely to be one of the reactions European leaders are now weighing. Analysts Sven Jari Stehn and Giovanni Pierdomenico wrote this weekend that the legislation had been designed precisely for situations like this—though perhaps not with a strong ally like the U.S. in mind.
The duo wrote: “Starting the activation does not mean implementation (which requires several steps) but signals potential E.U. action and allows time for negotiation. The ACI could involve a range of policy tools broader than tariffs, such as investment restrictions, taxation of U.S. assets and services.” On services, the E.U. conveniently holds a surplus over the U.S., meaning it would inflict greater harm in this particular industry compared to similar action from across the Atlantic.
Billionaire investor Ray Dalio warned Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s aggressive political direction could spark a new phase of global financial conflict, as foreign governments and investors reconsider their appetite for U.S. assets amid rising unease and economic tensions
“On the other side of trade deficits and trade wars, there are capital and capital wars,” Dalio told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “If you take the conflicts, you can’t ignore the possibility of the capital wars. In other words, maybe there’s not the same inclination to buy at U.S. debt and so on.”
The founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, is concerned that countries holding large amounts of U.S. dollars and Treasurys may become less willing to finance U.S. deficits if trust erodes. At the same time, the U.S. continues to issue large volumes of debt, creating a problematic situation if confidence weakens on either side, Dalio said.
“We know that both the holders of U.S. dollars are denominated … and those who need it, the United States, are worried about each other. Right? So if you have other countries who are holding it, and they’re worried about each other, and we’re producing a lot of it, that’s a big issue,” he said.
Treasury prices tumbled Tuesday as investors weighed renewed tariff threats from Washington that revived fears of a trade war with Europe and spurred a flight away from U.S. assets. The president has intensified his rhetoric on Greenland, threatening to impose new tariffs on countries opposing the sale of the Danish territory to the United States.
Dalio said history offers multiple examples of similar episodes in which economic conflict escalated beyond trade into capital flows and currency disputes. “When you have conflicts, international geopolitical conflicts, even allies do not want to hold each other’s debt. They prefer to go to a hard currency. This is logical and it’s factual, and it’s repeated throughout the world history,” he said.
“I will talk today about the breaking of the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a brutal reality where the geopolitics of the great powers is not subject to any constraint,” said Mr. Carney, who used a mixture of French and English in his address in Davos, Switzerland.
“Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry,” he said. “That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
He added, “Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
Mr. Carney, who received a standing ovation, spoke not long after Mr. Trump posted an A.I. image on social media that included a map of American flags superimposed over both Canada and the United States.
Jesus.
In his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Carney said that Canada’s commitment to an article in the NATO treaty that views an attack on any member as an attack on all members was “unwavering.” That article was not written with the consideration that one member would be attacking another. It is also not clear that all NATO members would respond militarily to an attack on another member.
Canada and the United States have a joint command for North American air defense. This week aircraft from both countries are at an American air base in Greenland as part of a regular training exercise that the joint air command said had been approved by Denmark.
In his speech Mr. Carney called on medium-size countries like Canada to band together to offset the power of the United States, China and Russia.
“The middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, we’re are on the menu,” he said. “Great powers can afford now to go it alone.”
We’re all on the menu.
Now: The Dollar Is Tumbling as Trade War Fears Spike
Fears of a brewing trade war between the United States and the European Union hit currency markets on Tuesday, pushing the dollar sharply lower as investors digested fresh talk of a so called European “trade bazooka” and a… pic.twitter.com/BplNUgScRf
A quote from a Canadian journalist is floating around the net, sometimes paraphrased. It’s best to get the real thing. It’s by David Cochrane, host of CBC News Network’s daily “Power & Politics.”
“America isn’t the way it is because [Trump is] president. He’s president because America is the way it is.”
David Cochrane on Trump and Trumpism: "America isn't the way it is because he's president. He's president because America is the way it is." pic.twitter.com/H27tLnCJDq
Three Catholic cardinals don’t address the way America is directly, but:
Three U.S. Catholic cardinals are urging the Trump administration to use a moral compass, saying U.S. military action in Venezuela, threats of acquiring Greenland and cuts in foreign aid risk bringing vast suffering instead of promoting peace.
Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington and Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J., warned that without a moral vision, the current debate over Washington’s foreign policy was mired in “polarization, partisanship, and narrow economic and social interests.”
“Most of the United States and the world are adrift morally in terms of foreign policy,” McElroy told The Associated Press. “I still believe the United States has a tremendous impact upon the world.”
The statement is ironic insofar as it concerns Donald Trump, an emotionally damaged man who asks forgiveness for nothing. Miraculously, he did not turn to stone after telling The New York Times this month that the only check on his power, his only moral compass, is his own morality. In fact, he has none. Cruelty is his compass. Especially against non-white, non-Europeans. They all have targets on their backs in Trump’s second administration.
The U.S. conference of Catholic bishops in November issued a “special message” condemning the administration’s profiling and targeting of immigrants in the name of border enforcement:
We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.
Cupich’s moral compass is shaped by his experiences growing up in Nebraska and serving for a decade as cardinal in Chicago. He told MS Now’s Rachel Maddow Monday night that Chicago is “the immigrant city.” The church celebrates mass there “in 26 different langauges.”
The target of the cardinals’ plea, Donald Trump, grew up in an affluent neighborhgood in Queens, fathered by a man known (and prosecuted) for his own prejudices.
America is the way it is because so many of us, like Trump, were carefully taught to hate all the people our relatives hate. Thus, Trumpism will likely survive Trump, Cochrane concludes.
The New York Times on Monday scored Donald Trump’s first year in office: “President Trump campaigned in 2024 on promises to “end inflation,” bring back manufacturing jobs and deliver an economic boom. A year after he returned to the White House, he has yet to deliver on those pledges.” There’s been some progress, but even those gains are obscured by what Paul Krugman describes as “Sundowning in America.” We’ll come back to that.
A few household items are cheaper. Gas has come down somewhat (he pledged to get it below $2/gal.). And eggs, somewhat. But “December saw the biggest one-month increase in grocery prices since 2022.” Trump can fool some of the people all of the time, but he can’t fool the ones who shop for groceries.
The Times finds that (gift article)”residential electricity prices in December were up 6.7 percent from a year earlier, and have risen far more in some areas.” So not a lot of help there.
“We will bring our automaking industry to the record levels of 37 years ago and we’ll be able to do it very quickly through tariffs.”
Nope. “Globally, U.S. carmakers have lost ground to foreign competitors, particularly Chinese companies specializing in affordable electric vehicles. Employment in the automaking sector has fallen by about 28,000 jobs in the past year.”
How about onshoring manufacturing? Not really.
Manufacturing employment was roughly flat in Mr. Trump’s first few months back in the White House, but has now fallen for eight straight months. Wage growth for rank-and-file factory workers also slowed in 2025.
Etc. This is that “truthful hyperbole” for which Trump is famous. Except for the truthful part.
There is plenty of circus but no bread in Trump 2.0, especially for all the civil servants DOGE fired in Trump’s first months. The only ones seeing gains in the first year of Trump 2.0 are those with investments. (Go figure.) Some of that was fueled by investor irrational exuberance over AI.
The Times Editorial Board finds that Trump himself pocketed at least $1.4 billion from being president in his first year back in office, including that $400 billion jet from Qatar.
But there’s not enough money in the world to fill the void where Trump’s soul should be. At some point soon he may not remember how much he owns or even where he is.
Krugman watched his father’s sundowning and recognizes it in Trump. Referencing Trump’s insane note to Norway, Krugman writes:
This might not exactly be sundowning, since it’s not clear that Trump is lucid and rational at any time of the day. What is incontrovertible is that he’s deeply unwell and rapidly getting sicker.
In fact, Trump is so deeply unwell that it’s time to stop blaming him for all the terrible things he’s doing. He is what he is. Responsibility for the catastrophe overtaking America now rests with his enablers — people who have to know that he’s a sick man but continue to support his depredations.
Some of these enablers are monsters themselves. For example, Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration czar and the architect of his violent ethnic cleansing policies, is clearly a fanatic who is using Trump to achieve his own fascist goals.
However, many of Trump’s enablers aren’t fanatics, just amoral opportunists. Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, clearly understands how destructive Trump’s actions are, evidenced by the fact that he has at times tried to tone them down. But for some inexplicable reason, Bessent has decided to sell his soul to Trump.
Them: If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?Me: If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?Looking at you, Bessent.
Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Kash Patel. The lot are there for the reflected glow from Trump.
Our deer-in-the-headlights Congress bears responsibility for Trump’s body remaining in office while his brain checks out for fantasies of destroying NATO and becoming emperor of the Western Hemisphere. There was a time in this country when Republicans from the House and Senate knew it was time for a Republican president to turn in his notice. They marched down to the Oval Office and made clear Richard Nixon could leave or be ousted.
But that when there were a few Republicans left with integrity and more devotion to their country than to their own ambitions.
I fear Trump may dispatch those arctic troops from Alaska to Greenland. Question is, will his commanders obey those illegal orders? The clock is ticking on Greenland. Urge your Republican representatives to grow a spine before it’s too late. Do it now.
US President Donald Trump’s proposed Board of Peace has got off to a rough start: questioned by Europe, criticized by Israel and celebrated by friends of the Kremlin.
France’s Emmanuel Macron, for one, has come right out of the gate to decline an invitation that was also extended to strongmen such as Belarus’s autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko. Several liberal democracies are squirming, uncertain how to respond and not wanting to offend Trump.
He invited Putin for heaven’s sake, the man who invaded Ukraine and is currently raining down bombs on its capitol.
Get a load of this:
They don’t have long to decide.
Trump wants the full constitution and remit of the committee signed in Davos on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter. But some elements of the small print have left invitees wondering whether to accept.
Jesus Christ. JUST SAY NO!!! You can’t appease him, he’s crazy as a loon. Haven’t they learned that by now??? He wants another fucking ceremony!!! Don’t give it to him. This is ridiculous.
Apparently this “board of peace” is designed to replace the UN. Trump will be the permanent leader and he’s demanding a billion dollars for any country that wants to be a permanent member of the board. I’m not kidding. Oh, and nobody knows what he’s going to do with the money but it’s going to be controlled by him.
That’s not an idle worry because he is selling Venezuelan oil and putting the proceeds into accounts in Qatar, ostensibly for the benefit of Venezuela but nobody really knows how this is going to work. Between Trump and the criminal regime Trump’s left in place it’s inevitable that the whole thing will turn out to be a corrupt boondoggle.
The new Nazi blockbuster is coming to German cinemas soon.
Wrong.
This striking guy in the Nazi coat—Gregory (Greg) Bovino—is a high-ranking U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, holding a position created specifically for him as "Special Operations Commander."
This striking guy in the Nazi coat—Gregory (Greg) Bovino—is a high-ranking U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, holding a position created specifically for him as “Special Operations Commander.”
I don’t know how many of you have listened to Rachel Maddow’s podcast series “Burn Order” about the Japanese internment but it’s really excellent. As with all of her work in that medium she exposes the fact that America has done all this stuff in the past, which isn’t exactly reassuring because it means that we really don’t progress all that much. On the other hand we did manage to survive so maybe we will this time too.
Anyway, in this one she reveals that the masterminds of the internment policy were a west coast military general and his aid who, in the post Pearl Harbor panic, managed to push through the policy over the objections of many in the administration and evidence that there were no Japanese American spies working against the US. (There were white American spies doing that for both Japan and Germany but whatevs.) It’s a great podcast, and I highly recommend it.
Today I read this in the NY Times about Gregory Bovino (that little Il Ducette of the border patrol up top) who is leading the charge in Minneapolis and elsewhere and was reminded once again that the more things change, the more they stay the same:
Before the Border Patrol embarked on its high-profile raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans and Minneapolis, it tried out its tactics a year ago in Kern County, in California’s agricultural heartland.
A lawsuit filed against the federal government over its operations in Bakersfield and other parts of Kern County claimed that in some instances, Border Patrol agents had not identified themselves or presented warrants. In others, people were grabbed with force, and their requests to call a lawyer were denied. And in one case, the lawsuit said, agents stopped a U.S. citizen driving a truck, slashed the tires, blocked the truck with another vehicle, arrested the driver and then released him a few hours later.
The raids last January, in the last days of the Biden administration, initially drew little attention outside the farm country of California’s Central Valley. At the time, the eyes of the world were focused on the two vast wildfires raging in Los Angeles County.
But the Border Patrol’s actions in Kern County, which it called Operation Return to Sender, can be seen as a blueprint for the broader immigration crackdown that was to come. Similar tactics have become part of the agency’s standard playbook in other places, including Minnesota, where federal immigration agents are making hundreds of arrests amid sustained protests from local leaders and residents.
The man who led the Kern County raids, Gregory Bovino, became a star among opponents of illegal immigration. When the Trump administration began an immigration crackdown in Los Angeles in June, Mr. Bovino was tapped to lead operations there, and he was later asked to lead crackdowns in other cities.
“The Kern County operation was a test run, or a pilot project, on Bovino’s part,” Minju Cho, a senior lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview. “We called it his audition for the Trump administration, and unfortunately, it seems to have worked. It really propelled him into the national spotlight, and since then, he’s only gained greater prominence as he’s been leading these operations around the country.”
The Border Patrol promoted the Kern County raids as a success, saying that it had arrested 78 undocumented immigrants during the three-day operation, including some with criminal histories.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit and won in court the judge finding that the CBP had violated the constitution, the law and its own policies. It was appealed and sits today in the glacially slow justice system while the country is being traumatized by Bovino’s violent, illegal strategy, which continues apace.
These racist hysterics take on a life of their own under the right circumstances. I will say that at least in WWII, we had been attacked and both Germany and Japan had declared war on the U.S. Not that it’s any excuse but there at least was an actual crisis on which they built their racist policy. This is just a vanity project for some sociopaths who are living in another dimension. There is no threat that requires every immigrant in America to be rousted out of their homes and workplaces and sent to camps and deported. It’s not necessary, never has been.
This crisis is completely fabricated. And yet it seems there is no way to stop it.
Yesterday, ICE raided a home on St. Paul’s East Side. Their target was ChongLy Scott Thao, an elderly Hmong American man. He’s a U.S. citizen with no criminal record. Armed ICE agents broke down the door without presenting a valid warrant, entered with guns drawn, and handcuffed him in front of his 5-year-old grandson, who was left crying and traumatized.
This happened in sub-zero conditions, with wind chills near -30°F. Thao was dragged outside wearing only shorts, a blanket, and Crocs and marched through the snow. ICE then drove him around for nearly an hour, questioned and fingerprinted him, confirmed he was a citizen and not the person they were looking for… and dropped him back at home. No apology. No explanation. No accountability.
The Hmong in the U.S. were American allies during the Vietnam war. They were invited here.
I’ve reposted my 2016 “morning after”post a few times but I think one piece of it is apropos for today. I’d been up all night, rewriting the piece I’d written about Hillary Clinton winning and I was reeling:
When I’m wrong, I’m wrong. Yesterday I woke up thinking that the United States would elect a new president and remain a mostly respected world superpower and a reasonably stable global economic leader…So, of course, the unthinkable happened.
On the news that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States, stock market futures nosedived, the dollar plunged and the whole world is in shock. We wake up today to a fundamentally different world than the one in which we woke up yesterday. The nation our allies looked to as the guarantor of global security will now be led by a pathologically dishonest, unqualified, inexperienced, temperamental, ignorant flimflam man. Things will never be the same. And we have no idea at the moment exactly what form this change is going to take, which makes this all very, very frightening.
When I’m right, I’m right, I guess. But I confess I never dreamed he’d get two terms. And he shouldn’t have. The country was wise enough to kick him out and then inexplicably brought him back which may have been the final nail in our coffin. It’s one thing to make the mistake of electing him in the first place. We’re a shallow country and he was a celebrity, something for which we’ve always had a weakness. But we saw what he was and we wisely said no to a second term, after which he tried to overthrow the election and incited an insurrection. Surely, he was done for.
Bringing him back after all that exposed the rot at the center of our political culture and signaled that this was no fluke. The consequences of that are glaringly obvious. We knew that it would be bad but it’s even worse than I thought on that horrible morning 8 years ago.
He has literally lost his mind and the people around him are egging him on.
One could observe many things about this document. One is the childish grammar, including the strange capitalizations (“Complete and Total Control”). Another is the loose grasp of history. Donald Trump did not end eight wars. Greenland has been Danish territory for centuries. Its residents are Danish citizens who vote in Danish elections. There are many “written documents” establishing Danish sovereignty in Greenland, including some signed by the United States. In his second term, Trump has done nothing for NATO—an organization that the U.S. created and theoretically leads, and that has only ever been used in defense of American interests. If the European members of NATO have begun spending more on their own defense (budgets to which the U.S. never contributed), that’s because of the threat they feel from Russia
Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.
Think about where this is leading. One possibility, anticipated this morning by financial markets, is a damaging trade war. Another is an American military occupation of Greenland. Try to imagine it: The U.S. Marines arrive in Nuuk, the island’s capital. Perhaps they kill some Danes; perhaps some American soldiers die too. And then what? If the invaders were Russians, they would arrest all of the politicians, put gangsters in charge, shoot people on the street for speaking Danish, change school curricula, and carry out a fake referendum to rubber-stamp the conquest. Is that the American plan too? If not, then what is it? This would not be the occupation of Iraq, which was difficult enough. U.S. troops would need to force Greenlanders, citizens of a treaty ally, to become American against their will.
For the past year, American allies around the world have tried very hard to find a theory that explains Trump’s behavior. Isolationism,neo-imperialism, and patrimonialism are all words that have been thrown around. But in the end, the president himself defeats all attempts to describe a “Trump doctrine.” He is locked into a world of his own, determined to “win” every encounter, whether in an imaginary competition for the Nobel Peace Prize or a protest from the mother of small children objecting to his masked, armed paramilitary in Minneapolis. These contests matter more to him than any long-term strategy. And of course, the need to appear victorious matters much more than Americans’ prosperity and well-being
The people around Trump could find ways to stop him, as some did in his first term, but they seem too corrupt or too power-hungry to try. That leaves Republicans in Congress as the last barrier. They owe it to the American people, and to the world, to stop Trump from acting out his fantasy in Greenland and doing permanent damage to American interests. He is at risk of alienating friends in not only Europe but also India, whose leader he also snubbed for failing to nominate him for a Nobel Prize, as well as South Korea, Japan, Australia. Years of careful diplomacy, billions of dollars in trade, are now at risk because senators and representatives who know better have refused to use the powers they have to block him. Now is the time.
Yeah, I’m not holding my breath.
This may blow over. Perhaps the Europeans will make him the honorary King of Denmark or something and appease him for the moment. But when you look at what’s happened so far just this year (only 20 days in!) we have an unprecedented domestic crisis unfolding on the streets, we’ve deposed the leader of Venezuela and seized their oil and now we have a potential war with Europe.
Whatever unfolds, as I said 8 years ago, things will never be the same. All we can hope for is that the country wises up and throws MAGA completely out of power and we build something better from the ashes. There’s certainly not going to be any going back. They’ve wrecked it.
A few months after the 2020 election, New York Times reporter Peter Baker and his wife, the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, traveled down to Mar-a-Lago to interview Donald Trump for their book “The Divider.” As Glasser wrote in the New Yorker on Jan. 8, they asked him in passing about his odd desire to take over Greenland, revelations of which had briefly appeared in the press and which they’d also heard about from some of his former staff. Trump told them he’d looked at the map and wondered, “Why don’t we have that?… Look at the size of this, it’s massive, and that should be part of the United States. It’s not different from a real-estate deal. It’s just a little bit larger, to put it mildly.”
It’s been speculated, notably by MSNOW’s Chris Hayes, that Trump was looking at the Mercator Projection map that we probably all remember from our grade school geography textbooks. For a variety of technical reasons, this navigation map distorts the size of the land masses near the poles. But it’s possible that Trump doesn’t know that and instead thinks that Greenland is about the size of the African continent. Greenland is about 25% bigger than Alaska, but it isn’t that big.
The president apparently got the idea of annexing Greenland from cosmetic heir Ronald Lauder, who seems to have a special interest in mineral deals both there and in Ukraine, and has been pushing Trump on the notion for years. Lauder offered to be a secret envoy to Denmark to try to make the deal. During his first term, Trump even floated a proposal to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland, as if he were playing marbles on the playground. At the time it was just another one of his kooky ideas that went nowhere, largely because the people around him were able to give him another shiny object to chase. But Trump obviously has never forgotten it, and over the past year he has shown a pathological determination to dominate the Western hemisphere, starting with his obsession for turning Canada into the 51st state, his recent incursion into Venezuela and, now, his renewed threats against Greenland, which have ratcheted up in the last few weeks.
Trump claims that the United States has to have Greenland for national security purposes because the Arctic is under threat from Russia and China. The U.S., he has said, must possess the island in order to prevent them from taking it. But his administration is not the first to notice Greenland’s strategic value, which is why there have been friendly treaties and agreements regarding it between Europe and the United States for many decades. As a semiautonomous Danish territory, Greenland is protected by NATO, which would not only marshal the U.S. military to respond to any attack but would also rally the alliance’s other 31 countries.
If the U.S. or Trump’s pals want to make deals for mineral rights, they are free to do so. There is no reason that anyone other than Greenlanders themselves must “own” the island. But as Trump told the New York Times, he feels ownership is “psychologically needed for success” — whatever that means — so he is determined to either get the people of Greenland and Denmark to give or sell the island to him, or to take it by force. Anything less than U.S. control, he said, is unacceptable.
To the Greenlanders and the Danes, Trump’s psychological need to own their country sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, and it is obviously non-negotiable.
Even though this is yet another looney episode of the Trump show, the consequences could be grave. As the Atlantic’s Tom Nichols wrote, European leaders are taking the president’s threats very seriously, as they should. He is clearly out of control and capable of anything right now, including simply issuing a late-night declaration that he has taken over Greenland and dares Denmark or anyone else to say otherwise. Trump believes he can mold reality to his will, and during his decade spent variously as candidate, president and former president, he has learned that he can get away with anything.
Perhaps everyone would ignore him as they have with his declaration that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America. But there’s a good chance he would attempt to enforce his claims, which could set off a disastrous chain of events that could see the American military stretched around the globe and aggressors like Russia and China taking advantage of the opportunity, resulting in a war in Europe and possibly Asia. Irrationally tearing up alliances for no reason is a very dangerous game.
In a show of solidarity, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway and Sweden sent troops to Greenland on Thursday for unscheduled maneuvers. The action followed a tense and dramatic meeting on Wednesday between Trump administration officials including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenland Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt. Vance and Rubio gave no quarter, and the two emissaries were forced to return home with nothing more than a promise for a “working group,” which means nothing. During an emotional interview with national broadcaster KNR about the meeting, Motzfeldt was in tears after describing the “increasing pressure” that accompanied Trump’s threats.
“We have been working very hard in our department, even though there are not many of us,” she said. “I would not normally like to say these words, but I will say them: We are very strong. We are doing our utmost. But the last few days, naturally…”
Then the tears came, before she collected herself and continued. “Oh, I am getting very emotional. I am overwhelmed. The last few days have been tough.”
By contrast, Trump told the press, “I would like to make a deal the easy way but if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”
The president clearly relishes humiliation. He’s been unafraid to use it in the past as one of his favorite intimidation tools. From the way Trump speaks about women, particularly journalists but also political rivals, calling them ugly and telling them “Quiet, piggy!” to the obsessive degradation of former president Joe Biden — which included Trump’s obnoxious impression of Biden during a speech in Detroit — this is one of his most offensive personality traits.
But Trump doesn’t just confine it to his domestic rivals; he also uses it on the world stage, including the most famous and disturbing example, when he and Vance verbally assaulted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a televised Oval Office meeting in February. With the weight of his country’s future on his shoulders, Zelenskyy was forced to absorb Trump and Vance’s insults and demands that he grovel before them.
On Saturday he made good on his threat to “do it the hard way” by announcing a new round of tariffs against Denmark and the NATO countries that have expressed solidarity with Greenland, including Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
With such sadistic policies and puerile behavior, the United States loses a little more respect around the world — and our society becomes a bit more decadent and cruel.
Other than a few MAGA cranks, there is no one who thinks any of this is a good idea. Both the House and the Senate have introduced bipartisan bills to prevent the American military from occupying or annexing NATO territories, including Greenland. There has even been talk of impeachment, with one of Trump’s chief GOP antagonists, the outgoing Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, declaring it “would be the end of his presidency” should Trump invade Greenland. Of course, we’ve heard such soothsaying before. But the public is equally dismayed. According to the latest Reuters-Ipsos poll, 71% of Americans disapprove of taking Greenland by military force.
None of this is having any effect on Trump’s ambition. He told Reuters in an interview that the poll is “fake” and explained that he doesn’t really care about opposition to any of his policies because “a lot of times, you can’t convince a voter. You have to just do what’s right. And then a lot of the things I did were not really politically popular. They turned out to be when it worked out so well.”
The president is now in the business of legacy building, which basically means slapping his name on everything in sight. (He told French president Emmanuel Macron on a tour of Mount Vernon that “If [Washington] was smart, he would’ve put his name on it. You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”)
Trump believes that seizing Greenland, one way or the other, would be his greatest legacy of all, to rival Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase or maybe even the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. But it’s really nothing more than the plan for the new White House ballroom on steroids — and no doubt he plans to rename it Trumpland. Unfortunately, this egomaniac could start World War III in the process.
Do something before Trump starts babbling about fluoride
The Mad King and Shadow President Stephen “Trump’s Brain” Miller mean to work their will before Americans rise up and resist his ethnic cleansing program, and before NATO countries can place enough forces in and around Greenland to deter Donald Trump from taking the world’s biggest island by force. “World’s biggest” has lots of curb appeal for the erstwhile real estate man.
No, we did not teach cases at the Naval War College where the president loses his last grip on reality and wants plans to start wars against our own allies. Amazingly, we did not think we had to design cases about a POTUS in a de facto alliance with the Kremlin to destroy NATO. https://t.co/8THfSrelCb
— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) January 18, 2026
Trump’s descent into madness is not theoretical. Neither is the risk he poses to you.
President Donald J. Trump is becoming increasingly critical of Canada in private conversations with his aides in regard to what he calls Canada's vulnerability to adversaries, such as China and Russia in the Arctic, similar reasons that the President has given for his demand to… pic.twitter.com/QEkEwVdlPq
Adam Cochran lives in Canada (if my research is right). He comments on the Open Source Intelligence Monitor post above:
This is why the 25th amendment exists.
A paranoid dementia patient thinks Canada is a “vulnerability”
We’ve had joint defense infrastructure with Canada since the 1950’s.
Including missile defense, radar and joint troop deployments.
The US cannot become safer by making Canada part of the US, because from a military perspective we already treat it that way.
If Russian or Chinese planes or boats entered Canadian territory, we’d know about it and have full rights to respond to it, and likely would arrive at it *before* Canada, due to the coverage of Alaska.
(Oh and PS – Canada pays a disproportionate cost for this infrastructure, so it’s actually cheaper for the US this way. We get the access, intel and security, for less cost)
Now would be a good time to pause the doomscrolling to call or write your representatives and demand 1) Trump back off his demand for Greenland at the risk of starting World War III (and handing Ukraine to Putin), 2) Trump cease his ethnic cleansing program that is terrorizing Americans, and 3) insist it’s time to invoke the 25th Amendment. Trump is what Section 4 is designed for.
Also, 4) get into the streets every chance you can. It’s not a movement if no one can see it. Resistance must be visible to your neighbors to be effective. They need “permisssion” to join in.
