Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

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.

Anne Applebaum has a piece this morning at the Atlantic about that mortifying text to the Norweigian Prime Minister that’s getting a lot of traction:

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.

Salon

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

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 18, 2026

I wish we could, but don’t brush off his threats as empty posturing. Venezuela should have taught us better.

While we confirmed that the 11th Airborne is on standby, and ABC claims it’s for Minnesota – I’m skeptical.

The 11th Airborne is an Alaska based division whose speciality is arctic warfare.

The kind the US would face in Greenland…

So them being on standby instead of MN based… https://t.co/tJIogLJZ7r

— 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

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) January 18, 2026

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.

Democracy is weakness! Truth is opinion! Justice is optional!

Everyone else views the world the same way I do. It is a feature, not a bug, of men like Donald Trump and minions in his orbit. The world is zero-sum, transactional. For me to win, you must lose. Cooperation is for losers, like sacrificing one’s life to save the world from men like him.

That view is on display this morning in a message Trump sent to the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre (Reuters):

Trump has linked his effort to take control of Greenland to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize, saying he no longer thought “purely of Peace” as the dispute over the island threatened to reignite a trade war with Europe.

Trump intensified his push to wrest sovereignty over Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark by threatening punitive tariffs on countries which stand in his way, prompting the European Union to weigh hitting back with its own measures.

Trump’s message begins:

“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, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

“The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland,” Trump finished. Denmark “cannot protect” Greenland from Russia or China, Trump wrote, adding: “Why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago.”

Might Makes Right

Støre confirmed the authenticity of the message in a published statement:

It came in response to a short text message from me to President Trump sent earlier on the same day, on behalf of myself and the President of Finland Alexander Stubb. In our message to Trump we conveyed our opposition to his announced tariff increases against Norway, Finland and select other countries. We pointed to the need to de-escalate and proposed a telephone conversation between Trump, Stubb and myself on the same day. The response from Trump came shortly after the message was sent.

Støre adds (emphasis mine):

‘Norway’s position on Greenland is clear. Greenland is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and Norway fully supports the Kingdom of Denmark on this matter. We also support that NATO in a responsible way is taking steps to strengthen security and stability in the Arctic. As regards the Nobel Peace Prize, I have clearly explained, including to president Trump what is well known, the prize is awarded by an independent Nobel Committee and not the Norwegian Government,’ said the Prime Minister.

But for Trump that last part does not compute. Trump expects independent news networks, universities, D.C. architecture, and culture to reflect his tastes. He expects all to bow to his whims and threats. He views the world through an autocrat’s lens. Ergo, he assumes that things work in countries like Norway the way he now operates the U.S. Leaders dictate decisions like the Nobel Peace Prize. The country, not the independent Nobel Committee is to blame for his snubbing. All of Europe must pay.

Alain Berset, secretary general of the Council of Europe, reacts to Trump’s demands that Denmark surrender Greenland “the easy way” or “the hard way” in the New York Times. Trump’s threats have strained relations with Europe.

The 46-member Council of Europe was born from the ashes of World War II, “founded on the idea that law, not raw power, must guarantee the dignity and rights of individuals and the sovereign equality of states.” Trump threatens that postwar framework:

Democracy, multilateralism and accountability once defined the postwar order. These words are increasingly dismissed as elitist, woke or dead. We need to ask ourselves, on both sides of the Atlantic, if we want to live in a world where democracy is recast as weakness, truth as opinion and justice as an option.

Given how he treats American citizens in Minnesota, Trump is not interested in living in that world. Americans had best decide, and swiftly, if that’s a United States we will accept before Trump has a chance to consolidate totalitarian control. We too must decide if we want to live in a country where democracy is recast as weakness, truth as opinion and justice as an option.

As goes the U.S., so goes the postwar order. Americans once again have a responsibility for protecting the world from men like Trump.

Incredible… the story is actually not a parody.

just had confirmed live on BBC Breakfast, from here in Davos, that yes, President Trump sent THAT note to the Norwegian PM saying that because they hadn’t given the Nobel Peace Prize, he could now justify owning Greenland. https://t.co/NKIMrcdw6p pic.twitter.com/PgeJtKFORb

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) January 19, 2026

New CNN poll

Democratic registered voters are far more motivated right now than Republicans. While the party has a 5-point edge on the generic ballot, among those who say they’re deeply motivated to vote, that advantage expands to a massive 16 points.

Democrats enter this year with a chance to capitalize on public dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled government in Washington. CNN’s poll found a majority of Americans consider the first year of Trump’s second term to be a failure, with just 29% of independents approving of his job performance.

The generic congressional ballot measures which of the two major parties voters would rather support in an upcoming election. While it does not capture how voters may ultimately respond to the candidates whose names appear in their district, the generic ballot can be an early indicator of which party holds the upper hand nationwide.

In 2018, when Democrats won back the US House in Trump’s first term, Democrats had a similar 5-point edge among registered voters at around the same point in the year. In 2022, when Republicans won a narrow majority during former President Joe Biden’s administration, voters were about evenly split between the two parties.

Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, broad majorities say Democrats in Congress have done too little to oppose Trump and have been ineffective at resisting Republican policies they oppose. They see their party’s caucus as falling particularly short compared with rank-and-file expectations for resisting Republican policies: Seventy-one percent say Democrats in Congress have been ineffective on that score, up 20 points from the 51% who expected a less than effective effort last January when the current Congress convened.

Extremely motivated Democratic-aligned voters are more likely than those who are less motivated to say Democrats in Congress aren’t doing enough to oppose Trump and aren’t effectively opposing Republican policies.

Note that this is entirely driven by negative partisanship, not an argument over ideology. This is about effectively opposing Trump.

Rob Brownstein has a typically excellent analysis. He notes that the Dems may have a narrow chance to take the Senate but they have to get over the hurdle of white working class voters in the northern states. He writes:

Across all these regions, Trump has substantially tightened the GOP grip on this demographic since he emerged as the party’s leader in 2016. Against Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, the exit polls showed Trump winning 69% of White men without a college degree, and 63% of the equivalent women. He won 87% of the working-class White voters who are evangelicals and 54% of those who are not.

One year into Trump’s second term, though, his situation looks more tenuous. A new compilation of all the national polls conducted in 2025 by a bipartisan polling team for NBC and CNBC found Trump’s overall job approval rating remained a commanding 70% among the non-college White men but had slipped to only 56% among the women of that demographic. Some other more recent national surveys, have shown his approval rating among the men sagging into the 55% range, and even slightly into net negative territory with the women; the latest national CNN survey conducted by SRSS put his approval at 53% with the non-college White men and 52% with the women.

PRRI data provided to CNN offers another lens on Trump’s eroding numbers. In a national survey last year, it found that while 77% of the non-college-educated White voters who are evangelical Christians approve of his job performance, blue-collar White voters who are not evangelicals now split almost exactly in half. “Compared to evangelical White working-class Americans, the non-evangelical cohort hold far less favorable views of Trump,” said Robert P. Jones, PRRI president and founder of PRRI. That contrast remains essential to Democratic Senate hopes outside the South.

Trump’s biggest vulnerability with working-class White voters is the same as with all other groups: disappointment that he has not made more progress at controlling the cost of living. Affordability “is where the gap between what Trump seemed to promise and delivered is the largest, and it is also the issue they care most about,” said Democratic pollster Guy Molyneux.

While White working-class voters aren’t as negative on Trump’s economic performance as most other voters, they give him only tepid reviews.

In a January NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, just a narrow majority of the non-college White men (54%) approved of his handling of the economy, while a plurality of the women (48%) disapproved. (The new CNN poll also had a slight majority of the men approving, and the women splitting exactly in half, on his economic performance.) In a mid-December CBS/YouGov survey, only about one-fifth of Whites without a four-year college degree said they were personally better off because of Trump’s economic policies; in the latest CNN poll slightly more of them said his policies have hurt than helped the economy. Similarly, PRRI found that most working-class Whites who are not evangelicals now disapprove of Trump’s economic performance.

The blue-collar White women stand out in their discontent. In the mid-January Marist survey, a stunning 69% of them said the economy is not working for them personally — far more than the number of non-college White men (51%) who agreed. In a December Fox News Poll, blue-collar White women were far more likely to say they are falling behind economically than either college-educated White female voters, or White male voters with or without a degree.

And they are apoplextice about healthcare which explains the Democrats’ unusually hard line on this issue.

One economic concern looms especially large for these working-class women. “In every way they are hypervigilant about health care,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “They are the ones who go to the doctor (with their children), they are the ones who focus on preventive care for their families, and they are the caregivers when somebody gets sick.”

Almost without exception, Democratic strategists believe their best chance to regain ground among working-class White women is to stress the Republican Congress’ choices to cut Medicaid and to end the enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act while passing a tax cut that disproportionately benefited the affluent.

I’m in favor of running on everything, everywhere all at once — the motivated voters in this CNN poll are all about opposition to Trump. But they must also run on his shitty economy and the butchery of the health care system.

Read his whole piece. It’s the best I’ve read about what’s going on with the Democrats this cycle and I think he’s probably right. It’s possible but it’s going to take some deft handling. The key is the white working class women. I kind of think a lot of them aren’t too hot on the raids on day care centers and schools either. They may not like immigrants but this is the kind of stuff that makes you worry for your kids. All it will take is a fairly small percentage to defect which, combined with the incredibly motivated base, might just get this done.

I wish the WSJ had a gift link option because they are doing just excellent work on the Trump administration. This piece about what happened last week with Iran reveals that his methods are making everything worse for the people who live there. Not that he cares. He just believes that if he makes enough threats the world will fall in line.

President Trump on Tuesday said he had canceled all meetings with Iran’s leaders, entreated Iranians protesting their government to overthrow the regime and declared that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”

Just three days later, Trump signaled there would be no imminent strikes on Iran. The U.S. president, who appeared to have taken the country to the cusp of war, was pulling back from a military intervention as long as Tehran didn’t execute more demonstrators.

[…]

The prospect of an attack, less than two weeks after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, rattled leaders in capitals across the world, who feared that Trump’s penchant for quick aerial strikes could spark another protracted conflict in the Middle East while failing to dislodge the Iranian regime.

The U.S. is sending an aircraft-carrier strike group, additional jet fighters and missile defenses to the region, in a sign that bombs could still fall shortly after their arrival. But asked by reporters Friday whether American help for protesters was still on the way as promised, Trump said he alone decided not to issue an attack order. “Nobody convinced me. I convinced myself,” he said. “They didn’t hang anyone. They canceled the hangings. That had a big impact.”

Trump’s repeated posts on social media in support of protesters set off a guessing game as to whether he would consider hitting Iran again. Last June, he vowed to give Iran up to two weeks to negotiate over its nuclear program—before striking the country well before that deadline lapsed. He had already decided to send B-2 bombers and a cruise-missile-carrying submarine to attack three Iranian nuclear sites when he set the original deadline, leading some people to suspect a similar ruse this time around.

Striking Iran’s nuclear facilities in a one-and-done operation was a far less challenging mission than using force to compel an authoritarian regime in Tehran to heed its restive population or even yield power. 

Trump was advised of the daunting prospects of regime change, The Wall Street Journal reported, even after repeatedly saying the U.S. would support what some labeled a new Iranian revolution. Now critics fear for the future of protesters who had been emboldened by Trump’s call to action.

“He put American credibility on the line,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. “There will be, and already has been, a sense of betrayal and backlash from Iranians that will last well beyond the life of this presidency.”

They note that this echoes criticism of George HW Bush for encouraging Iraqis to rise up against Saddam after the first Gulf War under the assumption that he would back them and then left them to be slaughtered. We all know how that all turned out.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a Friday statement that nobody knows what Trump will ultimately decide except the president. “He keeps his options open and will make decisions in the best interest of America and the world,” she said.

The “world”did not elect that jackass, we did. It’s not his job to make decisions for the world. Not to mention that he’s an imbecile and a lunatic so …

On Jan. 2, Trump used the threat of U.S. military action to try to convince Tehran not to shoot at or kill protesters. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump posted on social media. It was a message he delivered several times online and in remarks to reporters.

The president had, in effect, set a red line. The question was how he might enforce it. 

As the protests grew—fueled by an economic crisis, state repression and statements of U.S. support—so did Tehran’s fury. Activists and human rights groups said that at least 2,000 people were killed in only a few days, though observers suspect the real casualty toll is much higher.

“Iran brought down the iron fist with speed and ferocity we haven’t seen before,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. The regime may have had a “perverse incentive” to quash the movement even more quickly and brutally before the U.S. was prepared to bomb Iran, he said.

Iran has oil so Trump’s interested in it. But he can’t keep his mouth shut so he’s making everything worse there.

On Tuesday, Trump was scheduled to meet with top officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine, to review some plans, but he skipped the session and detailed his thoughts once more on social media.

“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING—TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” he posted. “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”

[…]

Trump’s stern statements “certainly amplified the sense of possibility among Iranians,” Brookings’s Maloney said, even though U.S. support might not have been a major factor in getting Iranians into the streets, due to their longstanding skepticism of Washington.

On Tuesday evening, Trump was leaning toward ordering an attack and directed the Pentagon to prepare for a strike on Iran, the U.S. officials said. U.S. military officials went to bed that night expecting the president to give the final order for an attack the next day. Early Wednesday, the U.S. military evacuated some personnel from Al Udeid air base, in Qatar, home to U.S. aircraft and the major U.S. air war command center in the region.

But other people were talking to him, pointing out that he couldn’t be sure that strikes would topple the government and some people even pointed out that he might make things worse. Oh, and they told him that the US didn’t have the military assets they needed. Leaders in the Middle East frantically told him that it was a powder keg and that nobody knew who would take over. You’d think this would have been part of the discussion from the beginning but that’s not how Trump operates. Everyone tells him what he wants to hear and the bloodthirstiest among them usually have his ear the most.

He finally spoke with Netanyahu who weighed in against the strike because it was already too late and he was worried that without enough US military support things might go badly for Israel. Trump did not call anything off, and continued to send assets to the region. But they were reaching for an off-ramp which was provided when they decided the red line was actually the hanging of protesters. Iran backed out of it’s reported plans to do that and Trump was able to say that he’d succeeded in stopping it.

By Friday morning, Trump, too, was happy with Iran’s pronouncements that no more hangings would take place, and toned down his rhetoric. “I greatly respect the fact that all scheduled hangings…have been cancelled by the leadership of Iran. Thank you!”

Lindsey Graham had been banging the drum for strikes and abruptly backed down when Dear Leader did simply saying, “Hopefully, people won’t have to live under this regime and threat forever.”

We were this close to bombing another country in the first month of 2026. And it could have easily gone out of control because Trump is out of control.

I think Trump backed off because his friends in the region were against it. His family has so much money tied up in those countries that he can’t afford to do anything they don’t approve of. That’s pretty much the only thing that can stop him if Miller, Hegseth and Vance get his blood pumping for some carnage.

I got this from Rick Perlstein on Facebook. He writes:

This IS Stephen Miller’s ideology. Full fucking stop. I won’t even bother to pull out the salient quotes. Just click the link and read the whole thing.

You simply must read it all. It is everything.

Of course, if the original Klansmen knew Miller was a Jew, that would have been a problem for him. In fact, it’s a problem for him today, he just doesn’t know it yet.

Trump wants it all:

President Donald Trump is privately ramping up his focus on another target in the Western Hemisphere, increasingly complaining to aides in recent weeks about Canada’s vulnerability to U.S. adversaries in the Arctic, according to two U.S. officials, a senior administration official and three former senior U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.

As Trump’s advisers work toward his goal of acquiring Greenland, the president has privately grown more exercised about what he sees as Canada’s similar inability to defend its borders against any encroachment from Russia or China, specifically arguing Canada needs to spend more on defense, the officials said. They said his push has accelerated internal discussions about a broader Arctic strategy and potentially reaching an agreement with Canada this year to fortify its northern border.

“Trump is really worried about the U.S. continuing to drift in the Western Hemisphere and is focused on this,” one of the officials said.

They insist he isn’t talking about invading but merely forcing them to spend vast sums on arctic security to repel China and Russia.

His obsession with the Arctic is about oil and minerals and Canada has both so I don’t believe for a moment that his interest is in national security. Some people have put a bug in his ear and he’s focused on changing maps and running the world for the benefit of his family and his rich buddies.

If he was really concerned about Russia and China, he wouldn’t be sucking up to them the way he does. He’s just divvying up the spoils.

Random items

Eat your heart out, B52s:

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Sounds good to me:

…how would you like to run our entire country? Pretty pls?

— Katie Thompson (@electrickatie.bsky.social) 2026-01-18T01:18:32.533Z

This declaration from Shadow President Stephen “Trump’s Brain” Miller, regarding Greenland: “Denmark is a tiny country with a tiny economy and a tiny military. They cannot defend Greenland… Under every understanding of law that has existed about territorial control for 500 years, to control a territory you have to be able to defend a territory…”

Miller made up that “understanding” on the spot.

He drew a sharp rebuke from a Danish MP:

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Jarlov: “I hope he’s kept away from young women, because that’s the mentality of a rapist. You can’t defend yourself, so I’m going to take you. That’s basically what he’s saying.”

Keep on branding.

What law are you enforcing?

A cute video from Minnesota protests that popped up this morning illustrates ongoing confusion among both protesters and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents.

The context is a bit muddy. A line of agents has pushed back protesters off a public street. A protester videos his questioning agents. He’s asking for the Minnesota statute giving them authority to keep them off a public street. None answer. It is likely that the agents don’t know what law they are being asked to enforce. (It’s not a state law.) They are just following orders.

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It appears that this protest is taking place outside the Whipple Federal Building outside Minneapolis where protesters have gathered regularly since their state was invaded by DHS forces and in the wake of the killing of Renee Good.

But like the mute federal agents, the videographer snarkily videoing his questioning of DHS agents likely also does not know about the federal rule change behind this action. We covered it last week:

A rule published in the Federal Register last June modified 41 CFR 102-74, the rule governing the Federal Protective Service, or FPS. Originally set to take effect on Jan. 1 of this year, the new rule’s effective date was moved up to Nov. 5. If you’ve wondered what allows DHS goons to step off federal property and cross streets to assault protesters on a public sidewalk, here it is.

The Justice Guy’s substack reported in December:

It did not come from Congress and it did not come from a court. It arrived quietly, tucked into the Federal Register, written in the dry language of administrative housekeeping. Yet the practical effect is this: it expands where federal officers can detain you, and for what reasons, and it does so in a way that directly touches the right to protest and to document government action.

[…]

The new rule, codified at 6 CFR Part 139, rewrites the jurisdictional line. Instead of limiting enforcement to federal property, the rule now applies to areas outside federal property whenever the conduct in question affects federal property or the people on it. The text says that FPS jurisdiction extends to public areas whenever it is necessary to protect federal property or personnel. It also says that prohibited conduct now includes actions that occur off federal property if they affect, threaten, or endanger federal property or persons on the property.

A lot of us only half-know what we think we know. But so do the guys with the guns. It’s important to know your rights. It’s likely just as easy to know more about the laws in play than many of the goons sent out to enforce them. Look in particular at the irregularly clad masked men at the end of the video labeled HSI.