Tangle - Trumps escalates his Greenland push.

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has escalated his efforts to acquire Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark that he says is vital to national interests. The president has not ruled out using military force to take control of the island, while also threatening to impose tariffs on European nations who oppose the move. Many leaders of member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have condemned Trump’s comments and expressed concern that he is jeopardizing the stability of the alliance. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think Greenland’s relationship with the U.S. should be? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the latest on Greenland and the United States, and Donald Trump's apparent interest in acquiring. invading, getting, quote unquote, getting Greenland somehow. Not really sure exactly what's going to happen,

but that's part of the story we're going to share today. Before we jump in, I want to give you a quick heads up and a reminder that in Friday's members-only podcast, we published internal communications from our Slack channel. This was my idea. I sort of went off the reservation a little bit, but got my team on board. And the idea was to give our audience an inside look

of what happens behind the scenes and how we're discussing the day's issues when nobody is watching. Predictably, the post has generated a lot of valuable discussion among our readers, and we're proud of the decision to lean into transparency with our audience and immensely gratified by the thoughtful response that decision provoked. If you haven't yet, you can go back in our podcast feed to listen to that episode where we did a read-down, a sort of reenactment of the Slack channel, which was pretty fun with the editorial team. And you can also find a transcript of it. in the Friday edition on our website. All right, with that, I'm going to send it over to John for today's main story,

and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Hope it was relaxing and revitalizing, giving you enough energy for the week ahead. And as we head into this week, let's remember to bring the best of ourselves to everything that we do in the hopes of making a positive impact on those around us.

All right, with all that said, let's jump into today's quick hits. First up, France intends to reject an invitation to join President Donald Trump's Board of Peace that is set to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza as part of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement over concerns that the body could threaten the structure of the United Nations. In response, President Trump said that he will impose a 200% tariff on French wines and Champaigns. The U.S. has sent invitations to join the board to approximately 60 countries, and members must pay $1 billion to secure a seat beyond the first three years.

Number two, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments and a challenge to a Hawaii law that bans gun owners from bringing firearms into publicly accessible private property without permission from the property owner. Number three, the Pentagon reportedly ordered approximately 1,500 active duty soldiers to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota if President Trump invokes the Insurrection Act. Separately, the Justice Department said it is investigating a group of protesters who disrupted services at a church where a pastor is believed to lead a local immigration. and Customs Enforcement Office. Number four, the European Union and Mercosur, a South American trade bloc, signed a free trade agreement creating one of the world's largest free trade zones. The deal will eliminate over 90% of tariffs between the EU and Mercosur countries. And number five, a collision between high-speed trains in Spain killed at least 41 people,

making it the country's deadliest rail incident in over 10 years. The cause of the crash has not been determined. Let's move to Greenland, because President Trump said, as anything less than total, U.S. control of Greenland is unacceptable. But that demand didn't land well in Denmark or with the people of its massive territory in Greenland. During a meeting here in Washington yesterday, they made clear the island is not for sale. In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has escalated his efforts to acquire Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark that he says is vital to national interests.

The president has not ruled out using military force to take control of the island, while also threatening to impose tariffs on European nations who oppose the move. Many leaders of member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have condemned Trump's comments and expressed concern that he is jeopardizing the stability of the alliance. For context, President Trump proposed acquiring Greenland in his first term and has returned to the idea at the start of his second, citing Greenland's vast natural resources and its strategic geographic positioning for trade and national security. More recently, the president linked Greenland to a part of his second term national security strategy,

newly referred to as the Don Roe Doctrine, which prescribes a heightened focus on U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere. Leaders in Denmark and Greenland have largely criticized Trump's comments saying the territory is not for sale. We covered Trump's comments about Greenland at the start of his second term, and you can check that out with the link in today's episode description. On Wednesday, a delegation from Denmark and Greenland met with Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other U.S. officials at the White House. Afterwards, the Trump administration said Denmark and Greenland had agreed to continue to have technical talks on the acquisition of Greenland.

Danish foreign minister, Lars Luca Rasmussen, gave a different account, saying the two sides agreed to establish a working group to discuss a common way forward. Separately on Saturday, President Trump announced that he will levy a 10% tariff on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland, until a deal is reached for the U.S. to acquire Greenland. The tariff will increase to 25% on June 1st, 26. On Sunday, Trump sent a text message to Norwegian Prime Minister, UNESCO Stor, saying that he no longer feels an obligation to think purely of peace

after not winning the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland, Trump added. The message came in response to a text from Stor to Trump, asking to set up a call to de-escalate current tensions. The situation has raised questions about the stability of NATO. This week, the leader, of all 27 European Union nations will meet in Brussels, Belgium to discuss the latest developments and the bloc's response. The eight NATO nations named in Trump's tariff announcement

have also sent a small number of troops to Greenland to take part in military exercises. On Monday, Denmark announced an additional deployment to Greenland, bringing its total number of soldiers in the territory's capital to roughly 100. Separately, the new tariff could jeopardize the recent US-EU trade agreement, with French President Emmanuel Macron, reportedly calling for the EU to use its anti-coercion instrument. also known as its trade bazooka to restrict American companies' access to the European single market. Today, we'll cover the latest developments with views from the right and the left, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick break.

All right. First of let's start with what the right is saying. The right is mixed on Trump's push to acquire Greenland, with many saying he is using overly aggressive tactics to pursue a worthy goal. Some say the military and economic threats are ill-advised. others questioned the utility of NATO as an ongoing alliance. In the Daily Signal, Jared Stepman argued Europe needs to calm down about Greenland. Is the United States about to invade Greenland? If you followed this issue from the beginning

and have tried to accurately understand how the president operates, then you should conclude that this brouhaha is all about negotiating, Stepman said. I'd hazard to guess Trump's reason for potentially using the military is because he virtually always says as much. It is an option, one that he would almost certainly never take. What he wants is to create maximum urgency on the part of a negotiating partner to get a deal done. Greenland is important for the interests of the American people as far as security, economics, and even to a certain extent national pride.

Bringing the island territory fully into the American orbit is not just a pointless media stunt. It has real implications for U.S. strategy vis-à-vis major competitors like Russia and China, countries that have a keen desire to have access to and control of the Arctic, Stetman wrote. Given how much pressure Trump is globally putting on U.S. rivals, it makes sense that he's essentially playing hardball to ensure that Greenland remains and becomes an even more integral part of U.S. national security. The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about the Greenland War of 26. There are good reasons for Washington to care about Greenland, including the island's strategic

position and untapped reserves of rare earth minerals. Mr. Trump isn't the first president to suggest buying it outright, and the U.S. already has a high degree of access to the island, and Denmark is willing to negotiate more, the board said. Mr. Trump is taking reckless risk with the NATO alliance that advances U.S. interests in the Arctic. If he doesn't believe us, he can look up Norway, Sweden, and Finland in an Atlas. The latter two join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization recently, and already are discovering that with Mr. Trump, no good strategic deed goes unpunished. The economics are nonsensical, too. All of the countries on his tariff list, except for the

United Kingdom, are members of the European Union with a common trade policy. This means any tariff he imposes on those countries will have to extend their entire 27-member block. So much for the trade deals Mr. Trump negotiated to great fanfare last year with the EU and the UK, the board wrote. The message to these countries is that no deal with Mr. Trump can be trusted because he'll blow it up if he feels it serves his larger political purposes. In racket news, Matt Taibi asked, if NATO dies, do we really have to mourn? NATO is history's most expensive, a self-licking ice cream cone. Proponents spent much of the last three decades taking bold, often destructive policy actions to convince taxpayers of member nations the alliance needs to keep existing.

We've redrawn the world map multiple times and even invented new forms of war just to give it something to do, Taibi said. Now we're told that the issue with Trump possibly occupying Greenland isn't that it might be crazy or bad for Greenland, but that it might hurt the Transatlantic Security Alliance. NATO's mission was reimagined again and again over the years, notably after 9-11 when Article 5 of the NATO Treaty obligating member nations to fight was invoked for the first time. Then again in 2010, when we learned that NATO wasn't just a military alliance, but a political community. NATO's mission grew so unwieldy that by the time Trump arrived, it was nearly

impossible to say what it was, Taibi wrote. If some other president tried to militarily occupy the Danes territory in a more de facto than de jure fashion, with less of a Goodfellas vibe, Europe might have shrugged as it did in a thousand other incidents. But it's Trump, which means NATO may indeed finally crack and sink. Do we have to mourn? All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. Many on the left condemn Trump's disregard for alliances and say Europe should fight back. Others say Europe cannot win a power struggle with the U.S. Others suggest tech elites are driving Trump's Greenland push. In Bloomberg, Lionel Laurent argued Europe has the weapons for Trump's Greenland tariff war. Trump's contemptuous delight in beating up U.S.

allies was given free rain over the weekend as he raised the ante over the Arctic Territory. It's time for Europe to fight tariff with fire, Laurent said. The cost of such extra tariffs would be high. Bloomberg economics estimates they could cut these countries' U.S. exports by up to 50%. Germany, Sweden, and Denmark look especially vulnerable. But another timid acquiescence from the Europeans would be disastrous. This is textbook economic bullying, driven by a leader who recently said the only limitation on his global power was his own mind.

The starting point is bolstering the European Parliament's threat to hold back approval of last year's trade agreement, which was hailed by Trump's administration as providing unprecedented levels of market access for American products, Laurent said. There should be an urgent push, too, to unbox the EU's bazooka for the fight ahead. The bloc's anti-coercion instrument is explicitly designed to defend member states put under tariff pressure by foreign powers. That is a much bigger stick than the usual clobbering of more niche U.S. companies, such as Harley-David's and motorcycles, with higher import taxes. Also in Bloomberg, Mark Champion said, Europe can't afford a throw down over Greenland.

I sympathize with the European outrage over Donald Trump's naked attempt to bully Denmark, a particularly loyal NATO ally, into handing over Greenland. But as some leaders call for using the European Union's so-called bazooka of countermeasures to launch a full-blown trade war with the U.S., I'd suggest they game out the consequences before pulling the trigger, champion, route.

If Trump is ignoring Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's advice, never to start a fight that won't gain you much in victory, then Europe risks ignoring even wiser counsel from the Chinese military strategist Sun Su. Don't start a battle, you can't win. Would Poland and the Baltic states truly be willing to endanger their U.S. security umbrella over Greenland? Territorial sovereignty is a principle that they very much embrace,

but it's a principle. The threat of losing U.S. protection against Russia is for them, existential champion, said. Would they or most other European countries really risk giving Trump an excuse to withdraw intelligence sharing and U.S. sales of Patriot Air Defense missiles to Kiev with the potential for collapse of Ukrainian lines that would follow, likewise, would Italy really support the launch of a trade war with Washington when it isn't among the eight nations Trump has threatened with tariffs? In Jacobin, Lois partially wrote about the tech billionaires behind Trump's Greenland push. Though the island is not for sale,

the president emphasized Greenland's importance to U.S. national security. Left unspoken, a U.S. takeover could weaken the country's mining laws and ban on private property, aiding Trump's donors' plans to profit from the island's mineral deposits and built a libertarian techno city, partially said. As the country's glaciers recede, it's also facing sweeping climate-driven transformations, threatening traditional industries like fishing and hunting and exposing valuable mineral resources. These shifts have prompted interests from powerful players associated with Trump. Tech moguls in the front row of his inauguration, like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, are also investors in a startup aiming to mine Western Greenland for materials crucial to the

artificial intelligence boom. The push for control of the Arctic country comes as deep-pocketed investors like Andresen have been drawn to startups hoping to build experimental enclaves sold by the promise of freedom from the constraints of government, partially wrote. Proposals for these crypto states have sprung up in Honduras, Nigeria, the Marshall Islands, and Panama, the latter of which Trump has also recently proposed taking over by military force. The sales pitch includes replacing taxes and regulations with cryptocurrency and blockchain. These utopian dreams have led to Greenland. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take.

All right, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. I find this entire thing exasperating, in large part because Greenland is actually an important strategic piece on the global chessboard, and we have to make our next moves thoughtfully. Almost exactly a year ago when we covered this issue in the newsletter and on the podcast, I said that Trump was right to be thinking about Greenland. At the time, he was mostly talking about buying it or deepening our ties with the country. Here's what I wrote. Quote, let me say from the jump that this story is a great example of how frustrating Trump

can be for someone with moderate politics like me. He is broaching an important subject, the U.S. influence in Greenland, and his instincts are right. We should have a stronger relationship with them. He's also approaching it in a way that very few buttoned-up politicians would, making it a front-page story, and his approach is just novel enough to work. Greenland is, after all, already playing nice. Yet, he can't do a basic thing, like bring this debate into the public sphere without ruling out the possibility of using our military and absurd prospect or riffing on scratching out the border

between us in Canada, an obvious troll of Justin Trudeau. If you ask, this gives his opponent's easy ammunition to shoot down the entire notion. So now Trump is champion what I think is a worthwhile cause, but in a way that immediately creates division. The pros of Trump's approach are as strong now as they were then. Greenland is strategically important, and the Trump administration should be thinking about it as other world leaders jockey for influence in the Arctic. But the cons are also worse now than they were then. Trump is fracturing our alliances and he has exacerbated concerns that he could use the U.S. military against an ally. He has polarized this issue to the maximum, pitting Americans against each other and our allies. This entire saga also provides another

example of something that sounds like Trump derangement syndrome actually happening. That list is unfortunately growing. Imagine if I predicted this after Trump's election. Mass federal agents will repel from helicopters into apartment buildings in major U.S. cities to arrest people as they search for unauthorized immigrants. Many people would have probably said you have Trump derangement syndrome. Then it happened. If I'd said, I bet we'll start blowing up alleged drugboats in the Caribbean and then arrest an extradite Nicholas Maduro, many would have told me to seek help. And then it happened. And now, if I said something like, well, Trump seems so upset about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize that his spite might lead him to dynamite our military alliances and trade

relationships with Europe, you'd have to read this text message he sent to the Prime Minister of Norway to believe me. Quote, 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 a boat that landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there also. I've done more for NATO than any person since its founding, 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 D.J.T. Putting aside a few dozen things here, that Trump hasn't ended eight wars, that Norway's government does not decide the Nobel Peace Prize

that the Danish kingdom has owned Greenland for 300 years longer than the United States has existed, that many written documents legitimately enforced Denmark's ownership of Greenland and on and on and on. perhaps the most worrisome thing here is that the president is even breathing a word about not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in relation to a decision about using our military against an ally. And as we learned

from his interview with the New York Times last week, spite is a consistent motivator for Trump not to exercise restraint. Quote, I prohibited my family from doing business in my first term and I got absolutely no credit for it, Trump said. I found out that nobody cared and I'm allowed to. Again, this would all have sounded

like TDS a few months ago. Now, some of the president's biggest supporters went from claiming his text message was fake news to declaring it non-controversial. Now, I don't think Trump is actually going to invade Greenland. I still struggle to believe I'm writing that sentence. I think the president is doing something we've seen him do a million times before,

move the Overton window to create maximum leverage. There are some wildly daring, overconfident people on Trump's team, and who can blame them? risky military operations in Iran and Venezuela have been successful. Yet I still don't think enough people in the Trump administration would actually be willing to put U.S. boots on the ground in a territory controlled by a NATO ally. For one, the logistics are far from straightforward. How could the United States impose a military occupation of a Danish territory?

For two, Americans hate the idea of a military escalation against Greenland and Trump has always had good political instincts. He knows that he shouldn't pursue an issue polling at 4% approval, especially not in an election year, and especially when the administration is already playing defense on Trump's signature immigration and economic policies. I think, and hope, some people close to the president recognize that would be political suicide. Instead, I think Trump is trying to leverage chaos and fear to get some or most of what he wants. That could look like a vote on Greenland independence, but that seems less and less likely every day. As it turns out, Greenlanders don't want to be a member.

and earning goodwill is clearly not a priority of the Trump administration. It could look like Denmark coming to the table for some kind of deal to sell or give more land rights in Greenland to the U.S., but that is tough to see as well. We already have most of what we need. Greenland is already subjected to heavy U.S. influence since it is owned by a NATO ally. Furthermore, the U.S. enjoys sweeping military access in Greenland. We have one military base there already, and although Greenland's semi-autonomous government has some say in U.S. military operations on the island, a Cold War agreement signed by the United States and Denmark allows us to construct, install, maintain, and operate bases across the territory. Maybe he uses tariffs to bully Denmark and to selling Greenland to the United States.

Or maybe none of these details really matter if this all really boils down the Trump's personal desire to get Greenland as part of his larger legacy. We have the power, and if he has the focus, then Trump legitimately might just destabilize the global order to try it. This personal motivation is equal parts alarming and consistent. In an interview with the New York Times earlier this month, Trump described ownership of Greenland as, quote, psychologically needed for success, end quote. Asked to clarify if he meant psychologically important for him or the United States,

he said, psychologically important for me. It's all confounding, worrisome, and frankly a tad embarrassing. While the deadweight criticism of some allies was once a smart and true Trump attack line, the kind of thing past presidents were too cowardly to hammer home, our current posture crosses into the category of self-defeating and deranged. It is morphed into a fever dream of conquering 57,000 people and an island that we really don't need in order to ensure our own security. Even if we avoid a worst-case scenario here, I think it's time the president let go of this odd ambition and turned his attention back home.

We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answer. This one's from Sarah and Cranford, New Jersey. Sarah said, I'm confused when you guys report on the consumer price index. Is it a good or bad thing when the number increases? Okay, good question. Generally, it's a bad thing when the consumer price index, the CPI increases. More specifically, when it increases past economist's expectations. The CPI measures inflation by tracking the price, of a standardized set of consumer expenditures like groceries, housing, clothing, transportation, medical care, education, and data plans.

You may also hear about core CPI, which also measures inflation, but excludes the more volatile food and energy prices. If the CPI goes up, that means the cost of goods and services is going up. A small amount of constant inflation is not a bad thing. And in fact, many economists expect investable assets that contribute to the CPI to increase, which is why you'll often hear that CPI is outpacing, or underperforming expectations. Relatedly, you may also commonly hear that the Federal Reserve

targets 2% baseline inflation. According to the Brookings Institute, the costs of maintaining zero inflation would be a permanent reduction in global domestic product of 1 to 3% and a permanent drop in employment by the same amount. Some economic indicators you'd like to see go up, such as gross domestic product, GDP, stock market readouts like the S&P 500 or Dow Jones Industrial average and to a lesser extent trade balances. However, inflation, jobless claims, unemployment, and to a lesser extent, interest rates are all better when they're going down. All right, that is it for my take and your questions answered. I'm going to send them back to John for the rest of the pod and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace.

Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. On Friday, the Department of Education said it had temporarily delayed its plan to begin garnishing wages from student loan borrowers' paychecks. The department announced the move in December after a five-year hiatus, and the first notices to affected borrowers were set to be sent out last week. However, under-Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent spoke in favor of the pause, which he said allows the department to implement new student debt repayment and rehabilitation options that function more efficiently and fairly. The delay also comes as the Trump administration announces several measures aimed at addressing the rising cost of living, though Education Secretary

Linda McMahon did not confirm whether the collection's pause was part of that effort. Bloomberg has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. And last but not least, our Heaven Ice Day story. On New Year's Day, Phoenix was out for a walk in Westerly Rhode Island with his owner. However, Phoenix wandered onto dangerously thin ice and fell into a frozen pond. Fortunately, volunteers from the Misquamacut Fire Department responded within minutes, racing across the ice to retrieve the golden retriever and bring him to safety.

The department said that first responders and Phoenix were all doing well, went on scene, but warn the community that no ice is ever safe. Fox News has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please head over to reetangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow.

For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Wall signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wohl. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kback and associate editors, Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com.