Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Trump Melts Down at Davos, Confuses Iceland and Greenland

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

JVL, Sam Stein and Andrew Egger react live to Trump’s rambling and combative speech at Davos on January 21, 2026....

Transcript
Discussion (0)
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Starting point is 00:00:20 No dragons are harmed. Get thee to booster juice before dragon fruit vanishes once more. Booster Juice, Canadian born, blending since 1999. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullock, and I'm joined by JVL and Andrew Egger. We just watched a 72-minute speech from Donald Trump, followed by a roughly, I don't know, 25, 30-minute Q&A session at Davos, a tour to force. I guess the real sort of headline news, it would be that he took off the possibility of a military invasion of Greenland, I think. I don't know. Eddie?
Starting point is 00:00:57 Did he, Sam? In the context of he would browbeat and economically coerce all the NATO allies into selling it to him. So I guess no troops, but definitely trade wars, you be the judge. We'll see. Nothing's ever done. Nothing's ever off the table with this.
Starting point is 00:01:13 That's what I mean, he just says everything all the time. I'm sorry. This is a, I'm watching all the headlines coming across. People like, Trump removes threat of force. And I am sorry, but that is not. A thing which happened. Okay, what's your main headline? To me, this is like the moment.
Starting point is 00:01:35 I said that you guys on Slack. I think, remember in September, he went and spoke to all the flag officers in the U.S. military. He called everybody together in Quantico. And he takes us, went and, right? And there was like this stunned silence as a lot of people who, you know, didn't quite understand what he looked like up close saw. and I think that's what the world got today. I mean, if you have just been reading about Donald Trump in the Financial Times, you know, or, you know, the site or the telegraph or the London Times or something,
Starting point is 00:02:13 and then you sit down and see this for 78 minutes, I mean, everything now is undeniable. you see the reality of what America is being led by. And you see that the American constitutional order, which has the power to remove him, but which will not, is broken. Right. It's not just like, oh, there's this old guy.
Starting point is 00:02:44 It's that, will you have two mechanisms in the United States Constitution to remove this insane old person? And if it's not happening, that means either of the American people, support it or the Constitution is broken. Right. Let me, let me just, so for the people who didn't walk, and I'm envious of you, what JVL is talking about is that the speech really meandered in really odd directions and kind of uncomfortable ones at various times.
Starting point is 00:03:15 So, sure, he may have hinted that the military options off the table, but he also kept confusing Iceland for Greenland. He also trashed NATO allies repeatedly, made some sort of weird analysis. to Denmark getting overrun by Nazis and therefore we need Greenland. He threatened Canada, saying that their lives are there but for the grace of the United States and then point out to the Prime Minister Mark Coney and said, remember that when you make your nice little speeches. He threatened Emmanuel Macron.
Starting point is 00:03:42 He had a weird aside about Ilhan Omar, which I know Andrew wants to get to, that was just totally crazy and wild and inappropriate. He talked about the 2020 elections and said they were rigged and then hinted that there will be prosecutions for the 2020. We're going to play all this stuff. But that's just to give you a sense of how wild the entire 72 minutes each was. And that's in addition to all just the baseline lying. Right.
Starting point is 00:04:08 I mean, all of this. Like China, have any windmills. China actually has more wind farming than any other country in the world. Like the lie upon lie upon lie, which is just normal in America. And we all just like, yep, wow, there he goes again. So, Andrew, what was the, of all of this? And it's hard to sort of choose elements that sort of stand up. But was there one or two that stood out for you?
Starting point is 00:04:33 Yeah, I do think that the Greenland, all of the wishcasting that is currently happening around that has been really striking to me. Because it is just kind of true that, like, if he were to cross that Rubicon, there would not really be anything in the immediate term that any of these allies would be able to do about it. It's not like they're going to get into a shooting war with us over Greenland. Probably. Probably. Who knows? But, but like, so everybody is very heavily incentivized to treat Trump's one offhand. Like, I don't want to send in the troops. I don't want to have to send in the troops. I'm not going to send in the troops as like, oh, he said, he said those words.
Starting point is 00:05:06 He said, we're not going to send in the troops. Great. It's all problem solved. It's over. You know, everybody can go home. Meanwhile, he continues to say, we have to have it. It's non-negotiable. We're going to have it. We need to have it. And it's going to be ours. And then in the Q&A, he gets asked. So what's kind of the deal that you're willing to offer, willing to offer Denmark?
Starting point is 00:05:26 I mean, Denmark has said it for sale. But what would be like your- What did he say? I missed that part. He said, well, if you really think about it, they lose so much money on it anyway. They should be happy for us to just take it off their hands, right? So it's not like he is actually coming to them with a proposal that's going to make them be like, well, you know, we really didn't want to entertain this.
Starting point is 00:05:44 But gosh, it's just so good that, that, okay, you know, you've won us over. Art of the deal, Mr. Trump. No, I mean, it's still nothing but threats. And it's no carrot all stick. It's these tariffs. And like I just think like everybody wants to treat that. He took it off the table thing as gospel because it would be so insane for him to go forward with that. And maybe he means it.
Starting point is 00:06:06 Maybe he means it. You never know. But like that's a thing. We're all still grading him on a curve. Maybe he means it, but maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about. So I'm going to tee up this video of him seemingly to confuse Greenland and Iceland and then talking about someone calling him Daddy, who I think was, Mark Root, but I'm not totally sure. And then it just, it kind of really synthesized how weird this whole episode and was.
Starting point is 00:06:31 And I was just sort of thinking as he did this. I was like, what are the people seated there think? I mean, they're watching this. And it would be like, what is going on in this brain? Dead quiet. Yeah. Let's watch it. Yeah, let's watch it in JVL pick up after that.
Starting point is 00:06:46 Europe. I'm helping NATO. And I've, until the last few days. days when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy, right, last time? Very smart man said, he's our daddy. He's running it. I was like running it.
Starting point is 00:07:02 I went from running it to being a terrible human being. But now what I'm asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located, that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection. I mean, if you saw that, my friend. It's such a small ask. Remember, I'm going to get you, Sucker. Like, you know, how much for one rib? How much can we put the piece of cup?
Starting point is 00:07:30 How much for, you know, put the cup in my hand. Put the sort of my hands. It's, again, the guy is, it's like half bullying, half bragging, half grieving, half grievance. And so he's constantly like, you know, and everybody likes me. Also, everybody hates me. And it's unfair that they hate me. And, you know, and I, this, we have to have Greenland and we should have Greenland.
Starting point is 00:07:53 And it's so important. It's also nothing. It's nothing. It's just this little piece of ice that nobody even cares about. Why can't you just give it to us? Right? Like, it's so nothing. Burger.
Starting point is 00:08:04 Why? And he does it over and over again in the most insulting way possible. This is the other, the other aspect of it, which is that, and why I really don't believe that, you know, use of forces off the table. Okay. There are ways to, if what you really want to do is persuade people, there are ways to do that. You don't, for instance, insult the country.
Starting point is 00:08:30 You don't insult the people of Greenland. You don't insult the people of Denmark, which is, by the way, what Scott Bessent did. Did you guys catch that today? Yes. It's called Denmark irrelevant. That's great. Awesome. And then, so, and another thing you do is you make an offer, right?
Starting point is 00:08:47 You say we will give you $800 billion for it. What do you say? Let's start a negotiation, right? The things he's doing do not seem like they're designed to get to a transaction. They are extortion in there. And so if he's serious about really wanting this thing, then there are only two possible outcomes, one of which is that the Europeans give in to the extortion, which I think it's pretty clear now they're not going to. going to, and the other of which is that he takes it.
Starting point is 00:09:22 Extortion is, extortion is the appropriate word because he doesn't know diplomacy. He doesn't know carrots. He admitted it in the Q&A. He said, Robert Marker, he had to teach me diplomacy. And so everything's extortion. And you could tell he was seething a little bit about some of the speeches yesterday because they weren't giving into the extortion. That was particularly the case with Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada.
Starting point is 00:09:47 who, Andrew, you wrote about it today. Why don't you talk a little bit about morning shots? Because that speech really stood as a book end to Trump's, basically saying we have to establish, I'm going to use the phrase, a New World Order, but it's like basically that's what he was saying in which the middle ground country is kind of bandied again. So talk a little bit about the significance of that speech.
Starting point is 00:10:11 Yeah, I mean, the basic line from Mark Carney yesterday was, we have spent close to a century in this world where America leads the free world politically and economically and geostrategically. And it is increasingly clear that that is no longer a viable model for countries like ours, for mid-sized countries, mid-market countries to sign up for and sign on to. And it used to be the case that you had basically these, you know, in recent years, like two poles of trade, right? There was America and then there was this growing thing of China and other sort of like emerging economies that were more authoritarian and America was always trying to talk everybody into staying on side. You know, like we're going to marginalize them.
Starting point is 00:10:54 We are going to maintain these sorts of like global standards and things like that. And the, basically what we're seeing happen now is instead of treating those like two ends of a poll, guy or two to two poles on one spectrum of free to not free economies, Karnie's new model is the hegemon's. It's the hegemon's by which he means, and China that are now pushing around the little guys and the little guys are going to need to band together in order to stand any chance of withstanding hegemonic power, which again, he doesn't just be in China. I mean, it's such an amazing, amazing change here. And on that, on that topic, like I think one of the things that just really stood out to me watching the speech
Starting point is 00:11:36 today was when you get guys like Xi Jinping from China or Vladimir Putin who will come to these like international meetups of the of the honchos, whether it's at the World Economic Forum or the UN or whatever. And they will basically lie, right? I mean, they will talk a good game about democratic values. And the thing that is wrong is that they are not actually putting them into practice at home. They're being hypocritical about it. But they are at least still talking a good game about all these democratic values. I mean, hypocrisy is the, is the tribute vice pays to virtue, right? I mean, they run their countries with the understanding that, like, we can get a way, with a certain amount of stuff by by towing certain lines and bending others, right?
Starting point is 00:12:20 And what Trump has been doing when he comes in here, I mean, like, he does not pay, he, he pays no lip service to virtue at all. He, it's points for honesty. Points for honesty. And let me bring up Ilhan Omar here, because this is, this was the most jaw-dropping thing to me is that in this speech to world leaders at Davos, at Davos, sorry, I haven't pronounced this once correctly in the last two days, he's been getting a lot of shit about it. But he's here and he brings up this grievance with a random domestic lawmaker in his own
Starting point is 00:12:49 Congress at home. He calls her a fake Congress person. He says, Yohan Omar talking about, oh, the Constitution provides me. She comes from a country that's not a country and she's telling us how to run America. Not going to get away with it much longer. Can me tell you? Can you imagine Putin or Xi coming to an international forum and like saying things like that about one of his lawmakers, even though he controls, even though they have so much more actual despotic control over those bodies, they would never
Starting point is 00:13:20 in a million years come there and say that. I was just sort of wondering about the crowd there. I mean, a bunch of international figures and government officials being like, who the fuck is Ilhan Omar? Like, what is he talking? But like, do they know who this woman is? It's so, it's so random and inconsequential for
Starting point is 00:13:36 them. Can I rant about something, Sam? Sure. Well, is it about corny? Because I have the clip of Trump now responding to the Carney speech if you want to use it. No, do the Carney. We'll go back. It's not Carney. Okay.
Starting point is 00:13:49 So here's how, so here's how Trump responds to the Carney address from the, from the lectern today. That's going to just by its very nature, going to be defending Canada. Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way, they should be grateful also,
Starting point is 00:14:07 but they're not. I watch your prime minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful. that they should be grateful to us. Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements. Nice little country you got there. The shame if something happened to it. It's like, is there any other way to, is there any other way to interpret that? No, zero way. I mean, that's it. He's saying it. He's saying, you live but for the grace of us.
Starting point is 00:14:39 What do that mean? You're not going to live anymore? psychological occlusion. So yeah, that was the undercurrent of the entire speech, basically threats to NATO, saying NATO's not grateful enough, trashing NATO, Canada's not grateful enough, trash in Canada. He had some apocryphal tale about terrorists with some leader of Switzerland, and he made fun of Amanda Macron's glasses. And then he went into weird conspiracies around the 2020 elections.
Starting point is 00:15:06 We'll get to those later, but JVL, you want to go off on something. Floor is yours. Yeah, yeah. So, I don't know, maybe three-quarters of the way through during one of his attacks on NATO. He posited that it is a one-sided alliance because America would come to NATO's defense, the country's in NATO, but he doesn't think that they would come to our defense in America. And this is so unbelievably offensive because we just did this 20 years ago. Maybe nobody remembers it. But after 9-11, the countries of NATO, of their own accord, decided to throw in and commit troops
Starting point is 00:15:55 and give hundreds of the lives of their countrymen in Afghanistan and Iraq to aid the U.S. project. Hundreds of people from Great Britain, from Denmark, from France died. Soldiers who went to fighting those wars on behalf of America's interests. And for the President of the United States, to stand up there and say, oh, I don't think that you would come and help us if we needed it after that. I, what must think of us? He also doesn't understand how it works. Yeah, but he doesn't understand how not it a work. works, right? I mean, he thinks that everyone deposits some sort of money into some joint account
Starting point is 00:16:39 that's used for collective defense and that no one was paying into it beforehand. And so that's, you know, but he also doesn't understand the history, as you know, doesn't realize that Nita was there for us. The only time Article V has been used. So a very sincere lack of historical knowledge and understanding there. Outcomes, there's word now that the EU-U.S. trade deal is on ice. This did not shockingly resolve it. Trump's speech at Davos. They've halted the approval of U.S. trade deal after his Greenland tariff threat. So that's that. As Andrew noted, Canada's being driven into the arms of China. There's more trade deals being done between Europe directly with South American countries. We are seeing, Andrew, the isolation of the U.S.
Starting point is 00:17:26 on an economic footing in a way that I don't think is appreciated, actually. Yeah, and we saw baby steps toward this during Trump's first term, right? I mean, there were these trade wars. They did reorganize certain amounts of global trade, and it went kind of unremarked upon, but like even all through Biden, there were like fissures that had opened up that were never refilled. I mean, like the U.S. agriculture was never the same after the trade war with China. And it still isn't the same today. I mean, we're back to, like, making all of these, you know, billion dollar buyouts of farmers, things like that.
Starting point is 00:18:04 But the lesson of that is that, like, once the rest of the world makes alternative arrangements, even if the barriers do all fall off. And another president does declare the U.S. open for business three years from now, it doesn't all just come roaring back overnight, you know? Exactly. The U.S. still is an extremely wealthy country. There will always be people or there are likely always to be people who will want. to do business here, but that does not get you to replacement level once these new structures have been put in place. So really, like, the time would have to be now. And this is what we, this is what we talked about yesterday. I mean, like, Trump is, Trump is making this,
Starting point is 00:18:42 this pitch. He's, he's taken the U.S. out of the U.S.-led global order. There are mechanisms, JVL mentioned it a minute ago. There are mechanisms intrinsic to our process that could, in theory, stop it. And they are impeachment. And which is the, 25th Amendment. Those are the, those Which would not turn the presidency over to the Democratic Party. Give it to J.D. Vand. This is what I'm right. This is, again, I mean, it isn't, it isn't the case like, oh, well, why would Republicans do that? Why would they hand power to the Democrats?
Starting point is 00:19:09 It wouldn't. It would hand it forward to other Republicans. Yeah. And it's just amazing. I'll be skeptical of that. Nobody's saying it's going to happen. Of course it's not going to happen. Of course it's not going to happen.
Starting point is 00:19:20 But just, just think about it in these terms. Like, like the fact that it's not going to happen doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider the fact that they could do it at any time, right? It would go to JD and you look at him up there and he's insane and he's old and he's washed and he's dottering and he's rambling and he has no energy and he keeps calling Greenland, Iceland, because earlier in the speech he said that Greenland was a big beautiful piece of ice and it one shot at his brain and like he just doesn't have what he had before. And we are living in a world where he keeps getting away with it just because of the of the like assumptions and presuppositions of all of these people who have it all baked in now in Congress and in his cabinet
Starting point is 00:20:00 that like we're just going to hunker down and wait until he goes away and by then it's just going to be too late. So that's the way it is. Let me throw a little curve in here and you guys can noodle on it and stealing from Benji Sarlane a little bit. But there is one potential other check here that has happened before and appears to have happened in this instance, which is the markets. And when the markets go south. He tends to notice. Doesn't like the coverage on CNBC. And then he course corrects a little bit. And so we're going to actually play the clip of him taking military action off the table. But he did reference the fact, albeit he confused Iceland and Greenland. He did reference the fact that the markets didn't like what he was saying. And so I want to play the
Starting point is 00:20:46 clip and then I want JVL to address whether the markets still play a role here in terms of affecting Trump's thinking. But let's play the clip of him talking about military action off the table here. Ask for anything and we never got anything. We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won't do that. Okay. Now everyone's saying, oh, good. That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force.
Starting point is 00:21:22 I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland. Well, we already had it as a trustee, but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago after we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and others in World War II. We gave it back to them. We were a powerful force then, but we are a much more powerful force now. All right. So, look, he seems to have been impacted by the very, very terrible day that the stock market had yesterday around the stuff.
Starting point is 00:21:59 I'm assuming that Scott Bessington, others are tripping in his ear that this is not helping him out. That, you know, you have like 30-year yield going up. You don't want your domestic economy to suffer because you have some sort of fixation with, you know, invading Greenland. Is it true, JVL, to this point that he still is impacted by the markets? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, he clearly pays attention to the stock market. The problem isn't the stock market.
Starting point is 00:22:26 It's the bond market. And this is unsatisfactory to people who don't spend a lot of time, like, thinking about finance. But the bond market is where all tail risk lives. and that is the cost of U.S. debt. It's a little harder to understand. It's a little bit more opaque, but it drives everything. And, you know, he was bragging about how low mortgage rates had gotten. Well, they're back up, and they're back up because he's threatening Greenland.
Starting point is 00:23:00 I mean, this is literally, you know, you can't buy a house. As somebody on Twitter or Blue Sky said, like, you know, you can't afford a house because Trump is threatening Greenland. And that sounds like it's literally true, but it's literally the case. And the problem is that I don't know that bond markets can be fooled. And like he's still doing this stuff. He's still creating these trade wars. And all of these alternative pathways are going to, as Andrew said, are going to get created.
Starting point is 00:23:33 And once they're created, these alternative routes of trade and agreements and arrangements, you don't go back. You don't go back from this. And so anyway, continue to watch the bond markets. As I look for and think about, like, what could really blow up a Trump presidency? One of the things is, like, the bond market explodes. And so if Japan and a bunch of EU countries decide that they're going to not participate in the next treasury auction, that would be enormous. if Canada decides it wants to dump U.S. treasuries.
Starting point is 00:24:12 And Canada holds an enormous amount of treasuries. Explain the treasury auction, what that actually means. I think a lot of people watch it. So what is that? What are you talking about? Okay. So the United States issues treasury bills. These are debt.
Starting point is 00:24:23 This is how we borrow money. And the way that does it is it holds an auction in which it is setting yield rates. So it's saying if you give us $100, we'll give you back $107 in three years time, five years time, ten years time, et cetera, et cetera. In general, the higher the yield that America needs to pay in order to convince people to buy these treasuries, that is a sign that people view us as a bad credit risk. And so when there is confidence in America, the yield is low,
Starting point is 00:24:57 when there is uncertainty, the yield goes high. What you could see if you have a bunch of big, Because many of the people who purchase treasury bills at auction are in fact sovereign states. If they decide they are not going to come to bid at auction, that means that the debt is not desirable and the price, the yield is going to have to go up by quite a lot. Another thing you could see is big institutional holders, like, for instance, Canada and Japan dumping treasuries,
Starting point is 00:25:31 which would, again, drive the yields very, very high. And you have that happening. And all of a sudden you get to the potential of like, well, holy shit, America can't borrow money anymore at rates that are anything like what we've historically been used to to borrowing at, at which point like the whole house of cards could kind of come down. Right. I mean, that is like extinction level event type stuff. And can I say, hold on, just quickly to your point, just quickly to your point because it was flagged for me. But Sweden's pension fund has said it's divesting most. of its holdings in treasuries and has been doing so since 2025.
Starting point is 00:26:09 And it's macroeconomic risks, but I do wonder if it's just sort of a lay of the land survey of U.S. domestic politics, right? They look at what's happening and say this is not any way to conduct business. Terrets are going on, tariffs are going off. This is a good way to play the 2020 election subversion clip because if you watch Trump, I mean, what he's talking about is just, you know, a U.S. political scene that is completely unpredictable, done with retribution. If you were an outside investor, you'd look at this and you'd say, wait a second, you're going to actually go after people and the other political party.
Starting point is 00:26:43 You're going to take stakes in businesses. Like, why would we invest in this? So let's play the 2020 election clip. And then, Andrew, you take it on the other side. It's a war that should have never started and it wouldn't have started if the 2020 U.S. presidential election weren't rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out.
Starting point is 00:27:01 people will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It's probably breaking news, but it should be. It was a rigged election. Can't have rigged elections. You need strong borders, strong elections, and ideally good press. I always say it. Strong borders, strong elections, free, fair elections, and fair media. The media is terrible.
Starting point is 00:27:25 It's very crooked. It's very biased, terrible. But someday it'll straighten out because it's losing all credibility. Think of it. When I went in a landslide, a giant landslide won all seven swing states, won the popular vote, won everything, and they only get negative press. That means it has no credibility. And if they're going to get credibility, they're going to have to be fair. So you need a fair press. All right. Yeah, I wonder, how do you suppose he got the idea that these prosecutions are coming down the pipe? I'm sure Pampondi's not looking at any information. I mean, like, that's, that must just be like an educated guess
Starting point is 00:28:02 on his part. No, I mean, like this, you're, you're absolutely right. And like, all of this stuff is the reason why this whole argument of like, well, you know, if he does anything that like truly instantaneously puts global markets on the brink of total collapse, he will pull back from that. Like, it is so unsatisfying as a, as a reassure. I mean, like, just to take a step back and and consider that that is the one like countervailing suggestion that we should maybe be consoling ourselves with. If there's anything that would immediately destroy everything all at once, he will see markets, you know, puke on that, and he'll be like, well, maybe not that one. And it's like, it's like, I don't know, it's like going to a doctor. You have this doctor recommended.
Starting point is 00:28:44 And it's like, every once in a while, he'll, like, freak out and, like, cut off your arm. But then he will, like, he'll slap a tourniquet on that baby, like, so fast and he does such good job, and it back up. And it's like, well, first of all, that's not very assuring on its own merits, but also that has that that has nothing to do with whether or not he is actually a good dog. It's not like, it's not like that fact suggests he's a great doctor all the rest of the time and all this stuff. Like most, most economic policy is not that kind of thing. It's not the kind of thing that immediately ruins everything. It's the kind of thing that starts certain boulders rolling down certain hills slowly at first and then faster and faster and faster. And by the time it is obvious
Starting point is 00:29:19 that they are like hurtling downhill at horrible speeds, it's far too late to stop them. And that is much more so than like the stuff that that's about to instantly crash the economy. That is the story of world trade right now as everybody just tries to get around. What is supposed to be like the normal rational he's come down from the Hill consensus of a 15% tariff here, a 35% tariff here there, a little threat to invade Greenland over here. We go and get Maduro over there. I'm going to threaten Ilhan Omar and I'm going to threaten Jim Comey and I'm going to threaten Liz Cheney and like and it's just it's one thing after another. after another, after another, after another, after another. And then you turn around and you realize you are in a world
Starting point is 00:29:58 where the United States is not seen as a safe place to do business and not a very profitable place to do business, business either, for all of these reasons. And then it's too late. Yeah, and also, I mean, shouldn't be lost in all this. He did talk about his pick for Fed chair. And one of the things he said was that, you know, his Fed chair has to be somebody who's going to do the right things and is going to lower interest rates.
Starting point is 00:30:22 and again, it's like telling the global audience, and hey, I'm going to try to make sure that the central bank isn't independent. What the fuck do you think is going to happen? Right. The market's going to react to that. Andrew, if Trump is the doctor, what's the tourniquet, and who's the arm? The chopping off the arm is invading Greenland militarily,
Starting point is 00:30:45 and the tourniquet is pulling back, I guess. I don't know. I'm not a big analogies guy. It just seemed like a thing to say. It's feel like you need to land that plane, buddy. If you're going to go into a big number, about that. I stand by it. All right. To wrap this up, because we don't want to go as long
Starting point is 00:30:58 as Trump did. We already seeing some follow here. You, like I mentioned earlier, is canceling its trade deal. I have to imagine that Carney continues sort of charting out the path that he does. I don't think he goes back from something like that. But what are the next
Starting point is 00:31:14 shoes to drop? Where does this go from here? I know JVille, you don't think military is off the table for Greenland. But what do you think is next. How does this play out? I don't know. I mean, I don't think military is off the table. I have sort of thought of one of the, I mean, you can see a bunch of different ways it plays out in Greenland, one of which is he just Gulf of America's it. And he says, it's ours. And, you know, like, I'm hereby instructing
Starting point is 00:31:42 everybody, you will lose your White House press credentials if you do not refer to Greenland as U.S. territory now. I mean, that's a thing he could do. And it sounds insane. but is it any would that be any more insane than everything we've already seen? I would take that solution. It's like the least of the bad thing. Another thing he could do is he could he could like expand outward a little bit from the base. And so from the Space Force base it's already there, he could like push out and say, well, we're just going to move the fences 20 feet and say that we now have more of it, right?
Starting point is 00:32:16 It's all it all becomes disputed territory. That's entirely possible as well. But if he's serious, again, this is the problem. He's saying over and over again that it is absolutely vital to America's national security that we have complete and total control of the entire island. There's no climb down from that. There's no like, well, and so if that's his position, then his choices are to annex it or change that.
Starting point is 00:32:46 That's it. Well, but there is, isn't there one other possibility here, is just that he loses focus and wanders away and starts paying more attention to demand. I mean, that's what happened last year, right? That's, I mean, he was making a lot of noises right in early, before he even took office. Like, we're going to have to have it. It's going to have to be ours. Totally vital to our national security.
Starting point is 00:33:05 But he is not a disciplined thinker. He does not, I mean, Greenland is not a Stephen Miller priority, right? The Stephen Miller priorities are the ones that continue to get pushed forward, even when the president stops noticing them and, like, wanders off to redecorate a ballroom or something like that. So I do think that is the one thing that I think some, there's a reason why NATO is still mostly like fixing their like rictus grins in place and be like sure Donald whatever you say, Donald. That won't change NATO's future plans.
Starting point is 00:33:34 100%. 100%. Like there's no unringing the bell of this being possible. That still is still disputed territory. I read about this yesterday, right? At this point, Greenland is disputed territory now. And it is not, you know, nobody can just assume that America doesn't have a. a claim on it because America has a claim on it. This claims being made by the president of the
Starting point is 00:33:54 United States, the duly elected president in the United States. It is being echoed by the president's party. And until such time as it is renounced, or there is legislation preventing the annexation from Greenland or we withdraw our military base on Greenland, nobody can assume that we are more than a single election away from another Republican pursuing that claim being made on this disputed territory. Okay, well, we'll be watching it. This was fun. Just for the historian's sake. Was it, Sam?
Starting point is 00:34:25 Was it fun? Well, this part was fun, not watching it. I was like talking to you guys. 72 minutes, 72 minutes for Trump, 34 minutes for us. The longest speech of the UN assembly, everyone knows was Castro, but can you off the top of your head, tell me how long it went? I think you in. Didn't he do like three hours? More, more Castro.
Starting point is 00:34:51 I mean, this is, Castro is famous for this. So Castro would do dinners. And his dinners, he would invite people to be his guest for dinner. And his dinners would be this. It would just be monologue. He'd monologue for hours at dinner. Nobody else was allowed to talk. So I can't even imagine.
Starting point is 00:35:06 What did he do with the UN? Sorry, is that not normal? That's what I do at home. That's what I do. At the UN, it was 269 minutes, which is 4.5 hours. Can you imagine I would have died? I would have had to pee. I got up and got.
Starting point is 00:35:23 Omar Gaddafi did 96 minutes one time in 2009 at the UN. So Trump, not quite there yet, not quite there yet, some goals to strive for for our president. Andrew, JVL, thank you guys so much for those who watched and endured. The Dream Lives On. Thank you for doing that. Subscribe to the bulwark. Hit that button. Share, like.
Starting point is 00:35:47 We appreciate it, as always. Talk to you next time.

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