Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Greenland Text Is Mob Boss Bullsh*t

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

JVL, Sam Stein, and Andrew Egger give their takes on Donald Trump’s shocking message to European leaders, in which he complains about not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and links it to his demands for the U.S. to take over Greenland. They unpack how Trump’s message reflects his strongman worldview, drives allies into China’s hands, and draws uneasy parallels to Putin’s actions in Ukraine.Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/TAKES and use promo code TAKES at checkout.

Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right Fortune Pick is only available at BetMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge.

BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my bulwark colleagues, Sam Stein and Andrew Eger. And we are taping Monday morning, waking up to news that the President of the United States has sent an amazing text message to two of our partners. I'm just going to start right away by reading the text to you guys and then we can all react to it. This is a text from Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, to Jonas Storr, from Norway. Dear Jonas, considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight 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. Denmark cannot protect the land from Russia or China, and 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.

but we had boats landing there also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since it's founding. I'm sorry. What? And now NATO should do something for the United States. The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland. Thank you, President DJT. We will back into where this statement came from in a moment.

But until we get there, Andrew and Sam, who would like to go first at the pinnata? Okay. I feel like that this is one of those where you have like anxiety where you sit down to talk about it. Because like any one single thing that you pull out of this statement to focus on, you're like not doing justice to all the other insane, ridiculous, stupid things in there by like making them go later. You know what I mean?

It's like you have to just be able to like like a burst of static out of a TV is like the amount of, It was what I want to be able to deliver to. I mean, it's like every single word in that is insane. The NATO thing, I guess start at the very top. Like, the country of Norway does not decide who gets the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee that happens to be in Oslo, like just an NGO that's sitting there in that city does that. Andrew, isn't this a confession on Trump's part? Because he believes that the President of the United States dictates everything that happens in the United States, including what,

Other programming is on the networks when the Army Navy football game is being televised. And so doesn't he believe that the government of Norway clearly decided? Like, I'm a gangster. So, everybody's a gangster. So, of course, if the government of Norway wanted the Nobel Prize Committee to assign it to me, they would make them do it. Yeah. Or at the very least, you know, like if they're not being a gangster on my behalf here, then what good are they? Right.

I mean, yeah. Like, it's, it's great. I mean, it's crazy. Right. I mean, and then you'd go from there to the fact that that is even on his mom. mind or that he's willing to admit that it's on his mind as he decides about this Greenland stuff. But I mean, obviously the kernel of this is the total gangster approach not to the peace prize, but to the sovereignty of Greenland, right?

I mean, like, that's, it's, Greenland has people. They, those people, some of them want to be part of Denmark. Some of them don't. They're coming to various, like, accommodations about this. There's a whole history that's there of, you know, how this arrangement came to be. But Trump, as he consistently wants to do and especially nakedly wants to do recently, is just trying to diminish this all to like a pure power play. It's like, well, you guys conquered Greenland first,

but we might conquer it now. So, like, it's just, I mean, every word of it is stupid, but like we should not lose sight of like the real sinister nature of these threats, even though they are so clownish. I would just say, yeah, just first I got to do a small fact check. It wasn't a text message, it was a letter. We actually obtained a written copy of it. Dear Jonas, considering you're, it's hard.

to make it up. It's in crayon. But there it is. Okay, just to confirm the validity of it. Secondly, is what I wonder what history book he was referencing about the boats arriving. Someone clearly told him that at some point boats arrived, but we also sent boats. And so I just want to know what books he's studying on this. Was it a Trump class battleship boat that we sent there? I'm not clear. I would like a little bit of insight into what, what literature he's been, he's been researching because he's mentioned the boats a couple times now. He seems to get fixated. on these things, right? Where it's like, because there's reports prior to this from the Prime Minister Norway who said, like, this comes up all the time, like quite literally every conversation they have.

Trump mentions the fact that he didn't get the Nobel. And the prime minister has to remind him that it's a committee, as Andrew noted, and he has no role in it. But no matter how many times he tells him this, Trump still brings it up. And he can't, right, he can't get his head around the fact that he was. And he was also handed a Nobel last week. So he should be satiated. he's not. And I joke, but it's really like frightening stuff, obviously, because now, just so people are aware, we're taping this Monday morning, he's going to Davos this week. He's going to be doing speeches in Davos in front of all these European officials and leaders and corporate leaders and all that stuff. And we are standing on the precipice right now of a truly unique and kind of horrifying reality, which is we will get into a retaliatory chair for with major European countries.

we could potentially see NATO dissolved, all the while, those European countries, I'm stealing from JVL here a little bit, you could pick up, but those European countries are going to run into the arms of China. We've already seen it with Canada, which put out this kind of glitzy, really nice video with Prime Minister Carney going over to Beijing. We have to understand the differences between Canada and other countries, and then focus our efforts to work together where we're aligned. And it's with this approach that Canada's forging a new strategic partnership with China. And so that's just going to happen.

And then on top of that, we are, we're getting close again with Vladimir Putin, who Trump has invited this morning to serve on the Peace Board of Gaza. So real realignment of the tectonic plates of global politics happening over Greenland, which no one care. It's like the, it's like a satire. It's ridiculous. Sam, I'm sorry, but we had no choice.

Americans had to give up their leadership of the world order. because eggs were too expensive for a couple weeks. That's just, I mean, it just makes all the sense of the world. These are legitimate concerns on the part of the American people. It's not that Greenland isn't like strategically important when it comes to the Arctic or whatever. Like it is, but we already have all of the access that we need in that department. Like that excuse is completely invented because we are in NATO, who are supposedly our allies. Right, NATO control.

We have our bases there. That's happening already. One other really, really quick thing. I just on the Nobel Prize, because it's just occurred to me, I really love the conceit that what the Nobel Prize is for is for placating bloodthirsty world leaders so that they will want to be more peace. Look, you could have given me the Nobel Prize and then I'd be focused on peace. It's such mob boss bullshit.

Because you didn't give me my little toy, I now have to be vicious. Like, I would, if my child said that, I would be like, come on, kid, like, grow up. Like, this is not how the real world works, buddy. This is our president. And at some point, you just sort of. I was wondering, and I hope maybe the commentators can help us out here, there's got to be a term for when you wake up and you see a story that seems so absurd on its face that you kind of do a double take and you scroll to see if it's confirmed by official accounts and you're like rubbing the crowd out of your eye. You're like, this can't be real. Because that's how I felt this morning.

I saw it. I was like, I saw it in Slack and I was like, this is, Adam Kiper fell for one. Like it's like, there's no way. There's just no way Adam got this one right. And I like clicked on. I was like, no, it's true. and it's confirmed. So there has to be a term for that.

I'm not sure what the term is. My wife suggested one. She called it the trunconscious. I think that's not that great. I love her, but that's not the best term. No, we need some term for that. No. It has to be German.

All right. It has to be a German word. People put in the comments suggestions for a term like that. This Trump text seems to, so we have now a statement this morning from the Prime Minister of Norway, Jonas Starr. He says, I can confirm that this is a text message. that I received yesterday afternoon from President Trump. 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. It was his decision to share his message with other NATO leaders. So what Trump did was then after he sent this text, he then sent the message that he had sent to the two of them to other leaders within NATO, which they understood what he was saying.

As a letter from NSC staff to that was your confusion there a second ago, Sam. The original thing was a text. I just really wanted an excuse to share my artwork, okay? No, it was lovely. Borg takes a sponsor by Delete Me. Delete me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a timeline. Surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make anyone vulnerable. It's easier than ever to find personal information about people online, having your address,

phone number, and family members' names hanging out there on the internet can have actual consequences in the real world. It makes everyone vulnerable. More and more online partisans and nefarious actors will find this data and use it to target political rivals, civil servants, and even outspoken citizens just posting their opinions online. I've got a huge online presence, and it's super important for me to keep a handle on how much of my data is out there. So I am recommending Delete Me. The New York Times Wirecutter has named Delete Me, their top pick for data removal services. Take control of your data. Keep your private life private by signing up

for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan. when you go to join deleteme.com slash takes and use promo code takes at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to join delete me.com slash takes and enter code takes at the checkout. That's join delete me.com slash takes code takes. We have the premonitor of Norway acting like a normal head of state, right? You know, private back channel communications. Let's get on the phone. we have to de-escalate and Trump escalates from there, right? I mean, this is, again, I think no way to read what's going on other than a series of continuing

escalations from Trump beginning over the weekend. And here's my first question for you guys. How is Trump's approach to Greenland different from Vladimir Putin's approach to Ukraine? Right. Now, he hasn't invaded yet. But Vladimir Putin for many years insisted that Ukraine wasn't a real country, that it was really part of Russia anyway, and that it was imperative for Russian security that they control Ukraine. How is that different? Well, I mean, put it in the Venezuela bucket.

I mean, this is the same exact type of stuff, right? It's like, oh, we don't like that war leader. We don't like the structure of that government. Or we don't, we want that country and we want its reserves. We'll take it. So am I being hyperbolic to say that this is basically Putinism but being done in America? I don't know if you're hyperbolic in saying. I think there's valid comparisons.

The question I have is, and this is always the case with Trump, it's like, let's say, what would you put the percentage chances of a week from now, some sort of negotiated settlement where the Europeans basically are like, give him everything he has entitled to already. Right. But like they, you know, glitz it up and say, oh, you, you've now purchased Greenland and you have ownership of it. And we've avoided a war. And then all the MAGA accounts are like, hard of the deal, man. This guy's, this guy's operating at a different level. What percentage chance would you put that at? I think it's lower than it, than it was a week ago. I would say a couple weeks ago, maybe not. Maybe it was only one week ago. Who can say? But I think I was on the next level with Tim. And Tim was like, I think there's a 30% chance that we invade Greenland. And I would. And I think there's a 30% chance that we invade Greenland. And I. And, And I was like, yeah, slow your roll, like 10%. And, you know, and I thought it was more likely that we would get to some sort of art of the deal. I don't think, I think the chances of that are diminishing.

Because Trump is behaving in such a way that it is going to be very difficult for Europe to give him what he wants because they now understand they have to decouple. They have to decouple from America. There is no choice. We're going to get nuclear proliferation. Germany is going to become a nuclear power. Poland's going to become a nuclear power. Japan's going to become a nuclear power. Canada probably has to get its own nuclear weapons.

I mean, this is the world we're headed towards. And Trump seems more and more hell-bent on invading. I've come to believe actually that the most, maybe not the most likely, but a high-likelihood outcome here, a high percentage outcome. Is it Trump just goes and says, yeah, this is ours now. He lands a boat on the base. He says this is ours. And the Europeans pull out. And it becomes a disputed territory the way like the Donbass has been. And the Europeans don't fight on it. But it becomes a disputed territory. And on the on the Putinism point specifically, obviously there are similarities. There are differences. But the thing that has been most striking to me here, I think that's

important here. I read about this a little bit in morning shots today is the way that Europe is now forced to confront Trump as though this is Putin is. I mean, this is just what you're talking about. JVL, it's extremely, extremely serious development, even just since last year of Europe moving from a position of appeasement toward Donald Trump to a position of deterrence for Donald Trump. And all last year, we saw them try appeasement. I mean, when they kind of came into the second Trump term with the idea that this guy was sort of a free radical, very susceptible to flattery, very biddable by basically anybody, and that that was going to present them with a lot of problems that they were going to need to really work on him in order to keep.

him on side when it came to Ukraine and things like that. And we saw them try to play that game, try to run that playbook where Trump goes over to the NATO summit, I think in June of last year. And they just butter him up so shamelessly. The entire time he's there, it's wow, Donald Trump, look at you. You know, we sure weren't pulling our weight before you came along and ah, you got us. You scared us straight. Good job, Donald. Shouldn't everybody be glad that the U.S. isn't pulling all this weight for NATO anymore and we're all just happy and this is great. Everything's great. Trump very kind of funnily actually was swayed by that for a little while. That that that that that that playbook does have its own short term benefits.

But the problem is the same as appeasement is always a problem for these sort of like autocrat, aspirational people. It's exactly the same reason you couldn't just sort of like talk Putin out of trying to take the Donbuss eventually because like sooner or later, there's only one language these people understand. And it is it is actually punching back. And that's the world that we're moving toward. If you're Europe, you tried.

You did actually try to keep the old arrangement going despite everything, despite Trump, all through that first year. And this is the world that that has led to. And I think you're right that that's not the world we're going to have going forward. It is the scene from Goodfellas where the guy who runs that Tiki Bar restaurant is like, all right, I need you. I'll be good. Like take all me. You come in, take a share of the restaurant. And they just take money, take money, take stuff, take stuff.

And then when you can't pay him, when you can't give the mob boss what he wants, What does he do? Burns it down. I mean, this is it. This is like, I know it's a stupid, silly analogy metaphor that's overused. But that's what it is. It's mob boss behavior. It is. So I want to talk to you guys a little bit about China. So we have this amazing moment here where America has decided to abdicate the American led order. Like we've just decided we're not doing it anymore. And so we did all this stuff where we cut research. and we're pushing, like, you know, it's like the reverse brain drain. We're telling people who want to be doing high value biomedical research to go do it someplace else. And we're trying to make it harder for people who are very smart from other countries to come here and start companies or do research themselves and enroll in grad programs. And China is sitting there basically saying, hey, we're a bunch of authoritarian. We're always going to be authoritarian, but we're not fucking crazy.

We basically believe in not a rules-based order exactly, because, you know, we are authoritarian, but we believe in a stable-ish world order. And if you are NATO, China has nothing to do with you. We're on the other side of the world, right? Come become our trading partner. And this is what we are going to wind up with, I think, basically, we're driving Europe into the arms of China because why wouldn't they? Again, am I crazy? No, let me read your story from this morning's Wall Street Journal, which is just absolutely validates what you're saying.

China had 5% GDP in 2025. Hit their growth hopes. But here's the best part. Exports drove China's economic expansion in 2025 to a degree not seen in nearly three decades. decades while companies held back on investing in Chinese consumers were reluctant to spend. So China's homegrown economy is actually not in great shape, but it's exporting all this stuff around the world because no one's doing business with America anymore. We've basically driven all these countries into China's arms. Keep in mind, China's in a kind of soft trade war with America.

So we're not taking Chinese goods as much as we have before. So yeah, European countries, Canada, as we just talked about, they're running. to China because relative to the Americans, it seems stable, predictable, investable. I don't know. Choose your word. And the contrast is no longer there. I mean, like, like the whole pitch from America all through sort of the rise of China, especially in the last few years when it's like, oh, I guess they're not really liberalizing like we thought they would. This is actually going to become a problem and we need to do some sort of economic containment. The pitch that America has been making to all of these places is, yeah, there's a lot of money that you can make in China, but you don't want that smoke.

You don't want to have to deal with all of the headaches of a trading partner that doesn't play fair, that doesn't shoot straight, that will bully your businesses, that will try to bully you, your country and the things that your people can and can't say. And all of this stuff only works. The argument only works if there's a contrast, if that's not the way that America does things. And right now that is the way America does things. And not only is that the way America does things, not only has that contrast completely

vanished. Not only is America operating just as in just as authoritarian a manner, but America has actively become a worse place to put your business just from a dollars and cents perspective because of these insane trade wars and because of all of this stuff that they just go on and on and on and on. I mean, this is the thing that just melts my brain completely is that like this is by far the biggest ratchet up of that exact phenomenon that we have seen happening right now. And it is somehow in some lunatic part of Trump's brain being done. done supposedly as part of a strategy of containment toward China. That's supposedly why we need Greenland, right?

Because otherwise, China wins, right? And in fact, we are giving China like the biggest golden parachute soft landing out of its own previous economic problems that they could ever have dreamed of getting for no reason, just for no reason at all, other than these pathologies of Trump. Do you think Trump really believes that, Andrew? I think Greenland is for him just the ballroom. Like, this is my legacy. Like, it's my new thing that I, yeah.

But it's, it is the stated rationale. We have to have this to, because otherwise China might get it. Right. So let's just go all the way to pressing. Is there any climb down from this? Is there any way back? Because my thesis, and I've been making this argument now for like the better part of a year, is that there's a category of things which can't be fixed.

And the reason they can't be fixed is because, We could fix them on our end, but that's not the way long-range strategic planning of sovereign nations works. And if you, you know, when you have to make plans for things that are going to happen for five years, 10 years, 30 years out, the fact that America has shown that it can do this means that it just simply isn't reliable. The American people who voted for this aren't reliable partners. You would need. Go ahead, please, talk to me. I just think you would need a, like, a real radical action on the part of the American state itself to repudiate this, which would basically mean impeachment or the 25th Amendment. And, you know, I'm not holding my breath for a...

So you talk about the word climb down, I think, is we should probably noodle on that for a second. Because there's a... You can climb down in theory from invading Greenland. I don't think any one of us is going to say it's 100% certainty. invade Greenland. So you can climb down off that. But what does that even mean to climb down at this point? Is the damage not done, right? Like, how do you undo what has happened? And not just, let's just take this Greenland thing.

I mean, even if they cut a deal, why would, you know, the damage to our relations with Europe and Denmark particular are astronomical. I don't know if folks saw there's an NBA game in London. So reputational, that damage is done. And then I think even spanning well beyond Greenland, I think we literally just talked about it. I mean, we've realigned the world order towards China in a shockingly quick. I mean, it's been a year.

And we've realigned the world order towards China. And I don't think people quite appreciate how insane that is to happen that fast. So I don't know if there's a climb down from that. It would take an incredible amount of ever by whoever follows Trump to rebuild that trust, to rebuild those relations. Even if you do that, our system of governance, thank God, is that there's no permanent president. So if you were another world for now, if you were another world leader, how could you ever say, well, you know, that's cool. I mean, we have four years of maybe some stability, but what kind of guarantees can we have? I'm sort of of the mindset that you'd have to have real structural legislative reforms that are concrete in some way that I can't even conceive to make things whole again.

And I don't think we'll get there, frankly. And the big problem here, of course, is the American people that some very large percentage, not a majority, but a substantial percentage of the American public wants this. Now, it's not a big one, even with Greenland, like the percentage of the, the percentage of the, country, which wants to take Greenland, I think, is like 20% or something like that. I think I saw a it was 17% which is just really small. But that so, right, but so the, again, if, if Trump were to actually do his invade Greenland, I guarantee you there are a public approval of that doubles overnight, right? And when you live in a world where a majority of one of the two major political parties supports this stuff, that's real, right? This is, that is a real president. It's not a majority.

but it's enough to give you a chance of winning power every four years. And this is a society problem. This is not, this is who we are. This is what America is. And it is a stunning to me that this happened inside of 10 years. You guys remember pop quiz? What was Marco Rubio's campaign slogan in 2016? The next American century.

The next American century. And now he is part of an administration, which has, its project is displace. dismantling the American-led world order. I found it interesting that, I mean, whatever, I'm not trying to, like, give him any pass whatsoever here. But I did find it interesting that Rubio was completely absent from the Sunday shows on the Greenland stuff. And he's been absent on the Greenland stuff.

This is really, like, they sent out Scott Besson to talk about Greenland, right? Like, it wasn't Marco Rubio. That doesn't mean that he gets a pass. But you have to imagine, I mean, hope. and pray that someone in the State Department, when they got wind of that text to the Prime Minister of Norway, must have been like, what the fuck is going on?

Like, this is so weird. And yet they all have hitched their eye to this. Guys, is there going to be any elite, significant elite level pushback to this stuff? That's our exit question. So within the Republican Party, are you going to get significant... Cruz already has come around and said he's fine with it.

Pence was talking about it in terms of, well, the tact is wrong, the approach is wrong, but we probably should get Greenland. They'll find a way to comfort themselves into this. I mean, there's, there's like the McConnell's and the Tillis's. Do they count as a leap? Probably not because they're on the way out. Yeah. Count as elite, but not significant, I don't think, right?

Unless other people climb on that. The committee chairs. Has Roger Wicker said anything? I haven't seen this one. Even that is kind of, it's going to be, no, I don't, I actually don't think so. I think if he were to make him, yeah, where's Hugh Hewitt? Where is Hugh Hewitt on the annexation of Greenland? Why it's important.

No, I think, I think I'm with you. It's like, and also he, Trump knows that as soon as he pulls the trigger proverbially, people will rally around him. And he'll get the defenders. I mean, the whole thing, it was really instructive to see the war powers resolution debate happened around Venezuela, where you did have at least two unsuspected senators, Todd Young and Josh Hawley say, you know, we're kind of principal about this stuff. And all it took was just a little bit of browbeating from the White House, a threat that they would lose their primary.

And they, like, completely coward. And so as weak as Trump feels to everyone in the polling shows, he still does have a remarkable ability to keep these people online. It's really amazing for someone who ostensibly doesn't have a political future in three years, ostensibly. Before we leave, before we leave, I would just like to point out that Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert showed more intestinal fortitude and commitment to principle in the face of coercion by Donald Trump than Josh Hawley. Just something to think about. Just something to think about. All right, I am not going to make you guys answer the question. I would just pose it and then we'll get out of here.

for people who are insisting, well, it's just three years left, and we got the midterms coming. If Donald Trump is adopting Vladimir Putin's foreign policy, why do we think he is not interested in Vladimir Putin's domestic policy outlook? Sure are going to be a lot of people in this administration who have committed crimes by three years from now. Do we think that they're all just going to be like, yeah, sure, peaceful transfer of power? It's all democracy. We're just here taking our turn.

now guys hit like hit subscribe follow the channel there will be more insanity probably in another hour or two we'll try to keep you up to date with all of it at the bulwark bye bye bye luck america