Breaking News from Pod Save America - Top Democrat SLAMS Trump Over Embarrassment Abroad and ICE

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Jon Lovett sits down with Senator Mark Warner in studio to talk Trump’s “framework of a deal” on Greenland, America’s place in the new world order, how our international intelligence relationships are holding up, if Democrats in Congress can rein in ICE, and the unique resume of the Senator’s new primary challenger. Go to https://www.cookunity.com/CROOKED for 50% off your first order. Thanks to CookUnity for supporting the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Joining me in studio, Vice Chair of the Intelligence Committee, Virginia, Senator Mark Warner, Good to see you. John, great to see you. So let's start with what's happening in Davos. Trump had as soon as, as recently as yesterday, doubled down on his threats to Greenland. Then he very ostentatiously backed off in his speech at Davos. He said that he will not use force while adding, you can say yes and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no and we will remember. And then we get word of something.

That sounds very presidential. Yes, of course. Well, we can, I want to ask you about the Mark Carney because it was man, the comparison between a kind of leader trying to make a argument about his interests and his nation's values and then our president getting up there and doing his kind of mad king improv. But he then said we got a deal and here was Trump when he was asked about it. Does it still include the United States having ownership of Greenland like you've said you wanted? It's a long-term deal. it's the ultimate long-term deal. And I think it puts everybody in a really good position,

especially as it pertains to security and minerals and everything else. How long would the deal be, Mr. President? Infinite. So what's your take on the infinite deal? My take is, you know, how long is that deal going to last? Will it change by tomorrow? The thing I think, I know Trump doesn't know the history much, but America used to have 17 military bases in Greenland.

We're down to one, not because the Danes said get out, but because we decided to get out. And the one base we got, we got a couple hundred Americans, and about twice as many Danes. So we've had this partnership with that country for way before World War II. Matter of fact, I talked to the Biparsen Center, Markowski, Tellis, Coons, who were there.

They were really understandably upset. The Danes put more soldiers, in our coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq, they had more folks killed per capita than we did. And then this kind of out of the blue, which started we thought kind of as a joke and now has turned into TBD because I'm trying to get some of the details

on what he's saying. The thing I know is the Danes were more than willing to say, you want to do, have more bases? Absolutely. You want to do mineral deals? Absolutely. There's only two mines working right now. Greenland. You know, the truth is the only national security threat to Greenland right now,

it's not China or Russia. It's the United States of America. Right. I mean, part of the reason we don't have whatever the mineral rights he's talking about the debate. The problem isn't that the Danes aren't allowing it. The problem is this fucking cult. It's really hard to do mines, even with the ice flows melting in this harsher territory. There are a reason that there's only two mines in Greenland. That was reported to me. What was this all about? John, you know, I wish I could tell you. As part of the gang of eight, we're supposed to get the most classified stuff.

I wish I could tell you, here was the logical reason. I had no idea. I think that the president's got an obsession about trying to add territory. We all know he thinks, you know, William McKinley was the most significant president because he added Cuba and the Philippines that, you know, those kind of colonial activities didn't fully work out long term that well. But the idea that we took the most successful alliance in America's history, NATO, and got it this close and who knows, whether it still is going to continue to exist because you can't continue to undermine trust and think our friends around the world are going to continue to salute and follow us as leaders. And we talked offline.

I'm sure we can get this. The situation with Canada just blows me away right now. our closest ally. I'm biased. My mom's family came from Ontario. But the idea that the Canadian prime minister is saying to the crowd at Davos, we can't rely on America anymore. And it's not just words.

He went to China last week and cut a trade deal saying China's more dependable. That does not help America. It doesn't make us safer. It doesn't make us richer. It is bad policy, bad politics all across the board. So, yeah, the speech by Carney is remarkable. In part because, as you say, we're watching someone describe a world in which Canada sees themselves as between us and China, as opposed to with us in an alliance against China economically

at the very least. What does the speech signal to you about the damage being done? He's laying out a worldview, a future in which China and other, with Canada and other countries have to kind of ally strategically when they can't trust the U.S. what are those of us who are pro-America anti-Trump? What do we say to that? Well, I remember when Trump, too, came in, you know, and sitting from the position on the Intelligence Committee, I thought, could you imagine you're like you're a senior spy at the CIA

and you're told, hey, we got a new president, he's back, here's the new plan, rushes our friend and Canada's the enemy. It was a bad joke then, but we're a year later, and the Canadian Prime Minister, who I I know socially a little bit, a very serious guy, very pro-American. His kids go to American schools, you know, was head of the Bank of Canada, head of the Bank of England. This guy's got some real chops, but has made the choice for his country, which I think is a legitimate choice, that you can't count on the United States of America. And when you have, when our hockey teams play in Canada now and people boo the national anthem,

you can't put that genie back in the bottle, even when we have a new president. This is long-term damage to how we are viewed, not just in Canada, but around the world. Right. I mean, look, you could argue that the first Trump term was an aberration, and in many ways he was more contained than he is now. So, yeah, the genie can't go back in the bottle, but there will be a post-Trump era when we is hoped to lead, we being Americans, we being those that believe in democracy and in sort of updating but keeping these international institutions. What is our story about what comes next? What do we say to our allies when they feel like they can't rely on us?

I think the first term, every country's had aberrations. But the fact that he's back and more unhinged, I mean, first term, Trump, I didn't agree with him. I tell you, I worked well with the Mnuchin, who was his Treasury Secretary, other folks. This crowd around him this time, with very few exceptions, are just out there. And I think about how I've felt the last 10 days or so, I felt embarrassed for our country. Yeah. I mean, the idea that Trump didn't get the fact that the world is laughing at him when the Venezuelan opposition leader Machado tried to give Trump her Nobel Prize, and he took it

kind of like thought it was the real deal, didn't realize people were laughing. And then a few days later, he says the crazy stuff, in print, a fact that he's a real deal. saying yeah one of the reasons why I'm thinking about Greenland and I don't have to be a peace guy anymore is because Norway you didn't give me the Nobel Prize even though Norway as a government doesn't give out the Nobel Prize so this this idea of how we are viewed in an Americans have always been a maybe a little bit goofy but I think the rest of the world kind of thought you're we can count on you to do the right thing at the end of the day that lack of being able to count on us going forward.

I don't know how we fully recover. And the question we get back home here and abroad is, you know, what happened to a traditional center-right Republican Party and why are there so few voices that are willing to stand up against this guy? Yeah, does it, yeah, the part of the, Carney's speech was interesting too, in which it was, it's only at the twilight of this era that you have a Canadian leader saying, look, the American hegemony had a lot of advantages,

brought a lot of stability, but it wasn't enforced evenly, right? There was advantages to being America and the rules didn't apply fairly. It's interesting to hear Canadian leaders say that so plainly. And now the turning of, there's, you know, the dial of rules applying, turning too far towards kind of becoming a cudgel,

and all of a sudden you have this sort of dissolution. How do we, what, do you have a, any thoughts about what comes after? Like, what is the world order we could help rebuild? Well, clearly the trade a little bit for a lot of our countries around the world was, we're going to spend a lot more money on defense and we're going to help protect you. You're going to go along with us eight times out of ten on what our foreign policy goals are. Except the French, and it was six. Except for the French. You know, maybe six, six at the best.

DeGaul may have been right in the 60s. we also said, okay, we get to have the reserve currency, and that economic value to us was huge. The fact that you've got this breakup of the trust relationship, coupled with a frontal assault on the independence of the Federal Reserve, is a double whammy that I'm not sure folks have fully thought through. And if you get way out there, you know, you can add. and if suddenly, I'm up to my eyeballs and all this crypto stuff at this point, trying to figure out what the rules ought to be there, if you are suddenly creating new methodologies of financial systems where it's not as dollar dependent,

this could be a really not a great story for our country. And we got some work to do. We got some, we got a, and I'm not sure folks fully appreciate how much damage has been done. Now, on the level, sitting in my chair with the intelligence relationships and the military, you know, those are still really good. But I've had countries that are saying some of our closest who have said, we can't share with the intelligence, our intelligence anymore with the Americans, we're not sure they're going to keep it safe. You know, the Dutch who really punch above their weight in the intelligence class, they said it in the Dutch media that we can't trust. America to keep our intelligence state. That's one more part of our blocks. Our strengths were, we got the biggest military, we also had the best intelligence, we had the best technology.

They did think, even if our system was slow, you got a rule of law, if that's all under assault, and it is, where this leads to is a level of uncharted territory. And you look at the reaction to Carney's speech, I don't know Davos are all the elites, but when the the world of elites and including most of the American business community that's there, gave him a standing ovation. We ought to take a pause. It's not great. Pod Save America is brought to you by Cook Unity.

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You're saying it's still holding strong, but around this issue, we were on the other side. We were on the other side. And the fact that the Brits, the Norwegians, the French, obviously the Danes were putting troops there so that if Trump had actually carried out as threat, are we. really going to fire on British troops? Well, we've done it a couple times before. Well, yeah, it goes back away. It's actually some of our best stuff. Yeah, 250 years ago, and then 1812, we had that little bother.

It's America Classic, really. But since that time, we've had a pretty good deal with that. Yeah, no, listen, and I want to say, I oppose war with Britain. And if that's not, I just want to be on record. That's a fairly radical statement, you know. Although, as you said earlier, the French. Yeah, listen, well, I, you know, it's a lesser of two evil situation. But I wanted to ask you about Marco Rubio.

But I'm sorry. The Intel, just one last thing on this. The thing that worries me about the Intel stuff is when a country starts to corrupt its intelligence product because you want the Intel to meet the policy goal. Iraq was obviously the shiny example. But when this crowd fires the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a two-star general, great reputation because the DIA said the truth about the strike we made on Iran, It was a wonderfully successful strike, but because he didn't use the words total obliteration, Trump's methodology.

He gets fired. When the national intelligence professionals who said Maduro bad guy, trender-long-wa, bad group, there's not this total linkage the way they wanted to represent, that those professionals get fired. I've had senior intelligence professionals say, Warner, what is going on? and there is a fear, particularly because of, you know, Gabbard's unusual appearances on so much of Russian activity and Russian media so many times and far-right media, that can we really share everything with the Americans? And our intel is the best, but it is so supplemented by our partners all around the world. And if we don't have access to that, then again, it doesn't make America safer.

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It does not increase the agency's overall budget, cuts the money allocated for enforcement and removal operations by $150 million, dollars, which is a small amount compared to the vast increase that just went through the Trump big, beautiful bill. But it will require uniforms, body cameras, does not remove the mask, clear a compromise. Another one of your colleagues, Chris Murphy, criticized the bill, saying it puts no meaningful constraints on the growing lawlessness of ICE. Where are you on this? Well, let me back up.

First of all, I think we ought to acknowledge, or at least I want to acknowledge, I think President Biden screwed up the border. You know, the process, we weren't prepared, folks coming in. And Trump got hired in certain ways because of the situation at the border. But closing the border is different than 10,000-plus ice agents, masked, you know, going door-to-door in certain communities, arresting folks when they drop off their kids at school or people going to work. So I got legislation to try to say, like, other law enforcement, you know, show your badge, show your face. There are ways we can prohibit doxing of ice agent. We've not passed that.

I can tell you in my state with these quotas where they're trying to pick up folks all the time, 75% of the people picked up, they've maybe come here illegally or overstayed when they were legal, but they've not committed any other crime. So I definitely want to put some additional constraints on ice. As you said, the vast bulk of their money that they're getting now is not coming from the budget. but it is coming from the big awful awful bill that did all this huge plus up. So, you know, the new words or the new bill came out literally this morning.

I want to dig into it. I got five or six days before I could decide. I don't think we ought to be shutting down the government again because I think that, again, from a Virginia standpoint, we got a lot of federal workers, we got a lot of contractors. The people who are contractors, the folks who clean the toilets in our federal buildings, they don't ever get reimbursed. And I want to weigh what kind of constraints that Murray said she got.

Obviously, Chris Murphy feels very strongly the other way. What's the best way that we can put constraints on ice that actually will get something done when we're still in the minority? And that's what I got to sort through over the next five or six days. Yeah, there is sort of, I think, a lot of people watching this unfold and they want to see Democrats do more. and Well, doing more and I hear this all the time on a bunch of issues.

Yeah. But is doing more just voting or is doing more trying to find a way to actually get some further constraints on these guys, trying to look at the fact

that the ice training has gone from multiple months to 47 days, which is wacky. So I'm all in on doing more but doing more where you can actually get a result. Well, no,

that's the question about it because it's, It's, you know, Democrats using their limited leverage to get concessions. Those concessions are ultimately unsatisfying, given the scale of what we're seeing, the lawlessness of what we're seeing. And yet, that is all that we have. And I'm just curious what you think about the balance between basically saying plainly what should be happening, which would go far beyond what this bill does, while what we are willing to accept.

I hung in and was proud to hang in on this last fight we had on health care. You know, I didn't, I stayed with, we got to stay in the shutdown. And I saw a lot of my folks, I said, wondering, you know, hang in there, but I'm not sure I can make my mortgage appointment payment next month. The folks that were the invisible people, and again, we got a lot more federal employees. The people I think about the most in this, not the federal employees are going to get reimbursed or even the high-price contractors, but there's a, we've outsourced so much of our work that literally the janitorial staffs and all the federal billings are contractors. They don't get any reimbursement. And I think we highlighted how much damage is being done on the health care debate. But we didn't, and we've got the public's attention.

And that will pay dividends in November, I absolutely believe. I'm not sure that the notion, though, that constantly threatening a government shutdown, I'm just not sure that's the right path and whether we burn the goodwill that we've earned. This ice, you know, I'm going to look at what we've got. Is it as much as I want it? Absolutely not. I'd like to actually talk to some of the Republicans. Although I get criticized appropriate for being too bipartisan, and I've lost so much faith in the vast majority of my Republican partners

who just have lost any willingness to stand up. And I'm so tired of them privately saying, oh, Mark, I think you're right. I've got one that even said, oh, Mark, it's like you're our conscience. Oh, you're a damn conscience. Vote your conscience. but that's what I got to sort through over these next few days. How can we be the opposition and actually extract some wins that are not just, you know, we held on, held on, held on. How do we actually change some of the policy?

Ultimately, it's going to come through an election, but what can we do in the interim? Speaking of us of Republicans, what they're saying behind the scenes, do you have a work relationship with, like, Scott Bessent? He was like, don't worry, don't worry, you know, Trump. There's a plan. There's a plan. Obviously, the plan is this ridiculous framework to, I guess, a claim we had a victory in Greenland. Well, nothing really changes. But do you have any relationship with the people inside this administration at all?

Very few. I've got a bit of relationship with Besson, and a lot of that was based upon, you know, the fact that in Trump won, as I think I mentioned, I had a good working relationship with Minochin. We actually got $12 billion for underserved communities through what's called community development financial institutions. CDFIs that I think post-COVID helped a lot of folks that if I had not had that relationship, we wouldn't have gotten in the last COVID bill. I was hoping for somewhat the same approach from Bessent. You know, I've had, you know, a couple of, I think, small wins on a crypto bill with him in one case of where I think the Doge guys were going way over the top. But I've been, there's a whole lot

stuff that he said and done that really disappoints me. I thought that this, and you know, you hear these outside reports standing up for the independence of the Federal Reserve, and this is not some esoteric intellectual thing, is if the Federal Reserve is not viewed as independent, people are going to charge us more interest by our debt, and that means everybody's prices are going to go up, your car loan's going to go up, your mortgage is going to go up. So there is, this is directly into the affordability argument, but they are few and far between in this administration. Is it that you think Bessent is not powerful? As you think Bessent doesn't is in over his head? What like this is this was you know look we are we are so far we are so far down

the path here but this is the person that's meant to be the serious one who talks to the business leaders and yet they are they are they're threatening tariffs over Greenland they're threatening the the the reserve currency they're threatening whether people will even want to buy treasuries. Yeah. And the argument you get usually, and again, I don't talk to Besant in months and months, is, you know, not from him directly, but from their defenders is, oh gosh, it would be worse. I'm not sure how much worse. It could be when we've seen in the last two weeks a direct frontal assault on the Federal Reserve, when we threatened our NATO allies on potentially an invasion,

when we didn't get briefed on what happened in Venezuela. One of the ironies, this stuff, as you know, all fits together. Like when we saw the Iranian people stand up, I think, really bravely. And kind of the response of we stand with the Iranian people, I think we needed to do more. But one of the reasons, and boy, boy, I am not by any means saying a kinetic actual strike on Iran would have made sense. But our ability even do that was cut back because we got 20% of our fleet off the coast of Venezuela,

blockading so the Venezuelan oil doesn't get out. And the aircraft carrier that was supposed to be in the Eastern Med was not there. It was off the coast of Venezuela. And so if we thought what could we do to help the Iranian people? Well, one, we could have gotten a more star link so they could open up the Internet. Two, we could do some cyber activities that we didn't fully deal with. But three, we could have, I think, potentially forced or urged all our European friends who have ties to Iran to really up the pressure. But they were not going to up the pressure on Iran when we're threatening NATO and Greenland.

So, you know, our military capacity was cut back because our aircraft carrier is somewhere else. We're now taking an aircraft carrier from Indo-Pacific and moving it to the Mediterranean. training. The fact that the Trump crowd doesn't seem to understand the interconnectedness of all this stuff literally blows me away. One last question for you. You have a new primary challenger in Virginia. His name is Mark Moran. He's a former Wall Street guy, but most famous, he appeared on season one of the reality show, Fuck Boy Island. Do you know what a fuck boy is? I'm an old guy, but I'm not that old a guy. So it's like, yeah, I would, I would say this. protect your interests or laughing.

I would say this. You know, John, you know, reality TV stars actually being good elected officials, I'd point to the president, and I'm not sure that's the credential I'd put out there. What about people that are beautifully on Survivor? You know, well, they're a different crowd. They're survivors by that nature. Right, right. It's a real hustle. A little sucking up, you know, always goes away.

Well, Senator Mark Warner, thank you so much for your time. Good to talk to you. And, man, you know, good look out there. Amen, brother. Thanks.