The Ben Mulroney Show - Trump throws down the gauntlet on Greenland. Danish response? "F#*$ off"

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

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BlueJ, AI for tax experts. This is the Ben Mulroney show. It is the first show of the rest of your life and your life. I like that. I'm going to use that. It is the, wait, whatever, we're the 20th of January, 2026. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you're aghast that I'm wearing a collared shirt. You know what? I was going to say something.

And it's tucked in, it's tucked into jeans. Now, just so people know what happens below the camera here, normally sweatpants. And the reason is, the reason is I am going to an event tonight where a gentleman by the name of Elie Sharabi will be in conversation. Eli Sharabi is an Israeli citizen who was abducted by Hamas on October 7th. He spent 491 days as their hostage in the tunnels. underneath Gaza. When he came out, he looked like a skeleton, and he was only after a few hours did he find out that his wife, his two daughters, and his older brother had all been killed by Hamas. And his story is one that I am so looking forward to hearing. This is a story of strength,

the likes of which I know I do not possess, the fact that he is even walking around in the world. And I noticed it on a national level when I visited Israel, the strength and resilience of that nation. But to meet somebody who has experienced so much trauma and so much loss, personal loss, and has still found a way to go on is somebody I need to know. So at the very least, I was going to put on a shirt with a collar. I've got a blazer in the car. So, yeah. So is it not quite the Alberta Tuxedo? No, no, no.

It's, well, you know, maybe I'll bring that when we go to, when we go to Alberta. Now, when I say world economic forum, firstly, I apologize. Right. Snore. Yeah, exactly. People hear that and they either think billionaires talking about flying in private jets and talking about issues that are going to control the world or it's billionaires do doing other stuff, but it's billionaires. And so people hear that and think, this does not concern me. And in any other year, the fact that Justin Trudeau was strolling through Davos with pop star Katie Perry, well, that would be the story.

It would be. It would be. It would be the story. Why is he there? Why is he there? He's giving people advice on the economics of the world. I try to say that without laughing. Sorry. Okay. So anyway, so he's there. He's there with Katie Perry. And that would be the story we would normally be talking about. But Donald Trump had other plans. the World Economic Forum, where they debate all sorts of stuff. And like I said, I'm not going to take the cynical view that they're trying to reshape the world. They have serious conversations there. It turned into a debate over Greenland. You and I were talking about this. How can we best describe what Donald Trump has done? So essentially what he did, metaphorically, is he invited world leaders. You've got to hope that it's metaphorically. Yes, he invited world leaders into a room with no windows and no other door. And once they were in there, he threw an angry, drunk, hungry honey badger into the room and closed the door.

And essentially said, unless you give me what I want, which is Greenland, I'm not opening this door. That's what he did. And I'm going to hold my breath as well. And I'm going to hold my breath as well. Exactly. Donald Trump has said there's no going back. He's past the point of no return. US needs to control outright Greenland, refusing to rule out the use of force in escalations with Denmark and other NATO countries. So, yeah.

Let's get the immediate response from people before context, because it was interesting, the Danish prime minister. Yes. Yes, let's listen to the Danish prime minister in his own words. Let me put this in words. understand. Mr. President, fuck off. I think we just let that sit there. It's kind of Shakespearean. It's kind of Shakespeare. It's very elegant. Here's Gavin Newsom, the governor of California,

and potentially somebody running in the next election to be president for the Democrats. Here's what he said. He's warning Europe to get a backbone regarding Greenland. Just I can't take this complicity. People rolling over. I should have brought a bunch of meat pads for all the world leaders. I mean, handing out crowns and handing, I mean, this is pathetic. Nobel Prizes they are being given away.

I mean, it's just pathetic. And I hope people understand how pathetic they look on the world stage. I mean, at least from an American perspective, it's embarrassing. Europeans think this is diplomacy, and this will ultimately work. Well, this is diplomacy with Donald Trump? He's a T-Rex. You mate with him or he devours you. One or the other.

So the choice is, you mate with them. Mate with the dinosaur or he eats you. Or he eats you. But yeah. So like that's the state of play today, right? But let's get back in the way back machine.

I told you we had a time machine here at BMS. We got to have to sound effects on that. Donald Trump wrote a letter to the Norwegian prime minister. It reads in the most unhinged manner. Did you not think that it was fake when you first read it? I didn't. I thought it was. There's no way this is real.

Look, nobody tells the president what to do. He's the buck stops with him and he can do what he wants. But the fact that this made it out of the White House, 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 for peace. And he essentially says, for the security of the United States and for security of the hemisphere, I need Greenland, full and total control of Greenland.

The world is not secure unless we have complete and total. Total control of Greenland. Thank you, exclamation point. Signed President DJT. That's it. I'm surprised he didn't write at the end. Dude. Yeah.

So he writes that letter. And then he begins with what he likes to do, the trolling. There's an image on his true social of him with planting an American flag on Greenland. Which he apparently tweeted out at 1 a.m. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's a picture. And this one should really irritate.

a lot of people because he's back to trolling us. It's a picture of him in the White House with a with a map on a stand. And all of North America, including Greenland, Venezuela and Cuba and Canada are part of the United States. Like all is, the American flags everywhere. Yeah. Now, is he joking? Well, like the Donald Trump apologists will say yes. Of course he's, I can't take that.

You've got to separate the signal from the noise. That's a, that's a Kevin O'Leary. special. You got to separate the signal from the noise. And this might be, this might be the signal. But this isn't trolling Justin Trudeau with a 51st state joke. Yeah.

Which got out of control. But it was just a joke. Yeah. This isn't that. This isn't that. This is an official White House stationary. He is, he's picking fights with countries.

We are, we are saying that we are going to respect our obligation as part of NATO, of which we have been, we are founding members in 1949. Article 5 of that treaty states clearly, an attack on one is an attack on all. It has been the most stabilizing alliance in the history of the world. Without NATO, we would not have the world, we would not have had more or less the stability that we have had,

especially in Western Europe, since the end of the Second World War. It has been a gift, NATO. And if I have to pick between our remaining in NATO and standing with our NATO allies, even if the call is coming from inside the House, even if the aggression comes from a NATO ally, I would pick that over an imperialist, impetuous president who just woke up one day and decided he needed Greenland. And by the way, the Danes have told him. The days are told him, if you want more bases here, you can have more bases here. They've said that.

There's a lot of room for it. You can have forward operating bases right there. You're in Germany. You're in Korea. You're in Japan. You could have one there. But for some reason, he has a bee and his bond about owning Greenland. Well, it's obviously because of the massive amounts of minerals that are there.

Huge amounts. Yeah, but then he's got to be honest about it. He kept on talking about as well about China, the threat from China. And China came out as well. We don't have that clip here, but they did come out and say, enough with this. We're not a threat. Well, yeah. They say that.

They can say that. They can say that. Anyway, this is a, this is it to be continued for sure. And I guess we're going to. Let's continue with this after the break. We will. All right. Don't go anywhere.

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only $4.98 each. And 10 pound bags of white potatoes just one 8080. Only till January 21st. Shop in store or at metro.ca. You're listening to The Ben Mulroney Show. That's the beginning of a song from a band called The Paradox. If you like that type of music from the 90s, early 2000s, discovered by Blink 182, but Travis Barker.

And yeah, like he discovered them, he mentored them. And all I would suggest, Google them because how do I say this? They don't look anything like you. think they look. And that's a good thing. It speaks to that music and the, um, the reach of it. Seriously, take a look. The paradox. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, uh, welcome back to the show. This is the Ben Mulrini show. And, uh, thank you very much for being here. Look, we did not want to start the show. In fact, we don't, we don't ever want to talk about this high level globalist stuff, right? Like the world economic forum stuff. We, we prefer talking about things that matter, um, that,

that have immediate impact on your life. But this does have. immediate impact on your life. This is that uncertainty that a guy like Donald Trump loves to sow. It's the chaos that he has agency over. And this stuff messes with people. Look, he had this plan, we'll get to this in a second, but he had this plan to set up a board of peace that would help in the rebuilding of Gaza. But he then expanded the mission. of it, if you read the charter of this Board of Peace, they essentially want to take over

from the United Nations in a lot of ways. Securing peace and bringing order and good government and all this stuff. And he wants every member, he wants all the G7 to join them. Not only that, but to pay. You got to pay a billion bucks to join. Yeah, Canada said. And Ken is mulling it. France said no.

Oh, Canada said no. I thought we were still mulling. I think, no, we've said no. Oh, says we, the mulling is No more mulling. The cessation of the mulling. Okay, so we said no. He's not happy about that. He told France, if you don't join, I'm going to tariff your wine and champagne at 200%. Meanwhile, he's then worried about, he's also simultaneously worried about losing that very tariff power as he awaits judgment from the Supreme Court.

All of these things matter to you. His tariff power matters to you because if he loses, he's got to send hundreds of billions of dollars back to where it came from. And he's even said, I don't know how I can pay for that. So all of this stuff matters. But let's get back to the here and now and the Greenland of it. And here's what Mark Carney, and I think quite astutely said at the World Economic Forum.

Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture. Canadians know that our old comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security, that assumption is no longer valid. You listen, this is a real threat. And as such, Mark Carney is our horse in this race. I'm back in this horse.

I've said I'm going to do so with a skeptical eye. And I'll say this, it would be really nice. It's a shame that we spent 10 years performing pirouettes, and wearing funny socks because, as opposed to taking ourselves seriously and taking threats around the world seriously, because there's no teeth behind this yet. Mark Carney has set out a path to rebuild our military, hasn't been done yet. So I don't know how much we can do, but the symbolism of standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies is not insignificant. It has to be said that we lost 10 years there.

When our prime minister says something like that, it would be really nice if it meant something more. than just the words. But we take Canada as it is, not as we wish it was. Canada reaffirmed its commitment to NATO, and I'm proud of that. He said that we're going to stand there. He argued that middle powers have to act together

rather than negotiate bilaterally. So essentially is asking us to form some sort of rump together. We've got to let's listen. I argue the middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu. but I'd also say that great powers great powers can afford for now to go it alone they have the market size the military capacity

and the leverage to dictate terms middle powers do not and I think he's absolutely right I mean that's a very realistic view of the world and I appreciate that I'm glad that he's not beating his chest and trying to write checks that candidate can't cash however

you know we were talking about this upstairs If NATO allies, we send our military to Greenland in a show of symbolic support. And Donald Trump calls our bluff and sends troops to Greenland. I don't think any bullets will fly. But that's his legacy. That is his legacy. He will have broken with a tradition that goes back 49 years. and he will be known as the first president to push back against NATO.

And he is an original, his country is an original, original signatory to that organization. That will be his legacy. Make no mistake. He will not, he'll be remembered for lots of stuff. That will be top line. Top line. More than the impeachments, more than the scandals, that will be the thing. because that is a bridge too far for almost everybody.

And I don't know how many. I mean, he's trying to convince Republicans to stand with him. I think there would be some good and decent Republicans that break from him on this. I think so too. I think he's certainly gone. He's gone over the line in terms of trolling and just saying stuff and wishing. And now he's saying, no, there's no going back. But are you, do you want to be known as the broker of peace?

or do you want to be known as the agent of chaos? You can't be both. You can't. And I appreciate that there's a tactic when you're communicating we say Hamas, that they need to think you're a little bit crazy. I get that. But Canada doesn't need to know you're crazy. Your allies don't need to know you're a little bit crazy.

In fact, you should tamp down on that when you talk to us. That's not what you want. You want us to sign deals with you? You want us to trust you? When our prime minister went to China and said, you know what China is more reliable. He's not kidding. He's not kidding. This guy is showing himself to be increasingly

a level of being unhinged that I know he's capable of. I didn't know that he'd be so proud to display. Okay. Interesting. There's also the, you know, about Greenland. I mean, why do most people know about Greenland? I don't know that he knows that much about Greenland. But he claims he wants Greenland to block Russian and Chinese Arctic expansion to gain control over rare earth minerals. And they do have a lot of rare earth minerals. It's not easy to get to because, I mean, it's the Arctic.

So it's not easy to do it. But there's a ton up there. Yeah, but you know what? If he did a deal with Canada, we got a ton in Ontario in the ring of fire. If only we could unlock that. If we could, yeah. Well, people in Greenland took the streets, thousands of them. Yeah. And it's hard to get a lot. thousands of people in Greenland together because there's only 56,000 to begin with. But it was a massive rally. You could see them walking around and they were yelling, you know, Greenland's not for sale.

Oh, there was an NBA game in London, I believe. And when the woman was singing the national anthem, she got booed. Now, I'm not somebody who likes to boo the national anthem. Yeah. But there is a rise in anti-American sentiment here. And Donald Trump loves to say that he stopped a bunch of wars. And he has certainly, in his own way, I'm sure, tamp down on certain. flash points but he's threatening to

start a war here those two things it's like they don't work for me in the same I don't understand how he's able to hold those two thoughts at the same time and his commerce secretary Harold Lutnik said Harold Howard Howard Howard Howard

Howard Lutnik Howard Nuttlick Not like oh God please yes but I mean he made it very clear he said yeah we need it because guess what you need us Yeah, well, it's, so it's, so he's the kiss ass in chief. And even he doesn't sound, he doesn't sound as confident selling this as he's tried to sell some other BS.

Do we have the audio? Of Howard? Yes. Yes. Give us Mr. Lutnik. When America shines, the world shines, because they all need to make sure America is strong and powerful to take care of them. God forbid. And so I think America and the Western Hemisphere are vital to America.

and I'm going to leave that to my national security people to address. Yeah, because he doesn't want to say the thing. He doesn't want to say we need Greenland, because I don't think he can say it with a straight face. I don't think you'll find anybody, rational person who disagrees. Yeah, we want America invested in hemispheric security. We want them, I'll focus on Western Europe. We want them to help defend Ukraine.

This is not that. And I think Lutnik knows that. chain is compromised. New on Showcase. You were hacked. You're telling me it's real. Someone's been watching and listening through you. Simulio.

We can either attempt to remove what's in your brain or we keep back open. Melissa Barrera. We need to use you to find them and destroy them. Tell me why you chose me. We either save the mission or save his life. The Copenhagen Test. All new Tuesdays. Only on Showcase.

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