It was another one of those everything, everywhere, all at once days, where figuring out how best and where to focus our coverage — with news breaking and changing by the hour — is always a Trump Era challenge (nightmare). We’re happy to have you along for the ride on today’s BradCast. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]
FIRST UP… There were some state legislative Special Elections in Virginia and Georgia on Tuesday. Dems appear to be continuing last year’s trend of radically outperforming their own results from 2024.
Also, Republicans are hilariously and hypocritically furious at Gov. Gavin Newsom selecting the latest possible date, August 4th, to hold a U.S. House Special Election in California to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa earlier this month. We’ll keep their crocodile anger in mind on January 31, when Texas holds its own U.S. House Special in Houston, to fill the seat left vacant following the death of Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner, who will have died 11 months prior to this month’s election, scheduled by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, to fill his seat.
The reverberations from Donald Trump‘s vow to takeover Greenland (which he repeatedly referred to as Iceland during his remarks today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland) continue to rattle Europe, world markets, and the NATO alliance.
On Tuesday, in Davos, Canada‘s Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out plans to forge new alliances without the United States, given Trump’s turn against our closest neighbor and largest trading partner. We share some of Carney’s landmark remarks.
THEN… Our longtime European allies called an emergency meeting at the start of the WEF this week in response to Trump’s declaration of punitive new trade tariffs imposed on the imports from those nations opposed to his promised takeover of Greenland, the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.
The Europeans seem prepared to end their go-along-to-get-along footing of the second Trump term, now that the U.S. President seems hellbent on action against Greenland that would upend the longstanding NATO and the post-WWII rules-based order along with it. Even far-right populist parties who have benefited from Trump’s support, seem to be distancing themselves from his latest behavior.
Today, during rambling remarks at Davos, Trump said, for the first time, that he would not use military force to takeover Greenland. “I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force,” he claimed.
He then went on to falsely assert that NATO has never done anything for the United States, despite the fact that they came to our aid following 9/11. It was the first and only time in the 80-year history of the world’s most successful military pact that the treaty’s Article 5, mandating that an attack against one NATO member nation requires a response from all, had been invoked.
Several hours later and just before airtime today, as world markets continued to be rattled by all of the upheaval, Trump announced on his failing social media site, that he had struck what he described as “the framework of a future deal” with NATO’s Secretary General, regarding Greenland. What that “future deal” looks like remains to be seen.
We’re joined today for analysis of all of this madness by RYAN COOPER, Managing Editor of The American Prospect, on the heels of his story this morning on “How the Free World Can Fight Mad King Trump”. In it, he details a number of ways that European nations can, and should, “stand up” to Trump, given Cooper’s argument that “appeasement will only lead to him coming back for a second helping.”
We discuss all of that and more today with Cooper, who notes, regarding whether anyone should believe Trump’s vow to not use force against Greenland (or even Iceland): “You basically can’t trust any word that comes out of Donald Trump’s big, flapping, potty-mouth.” Though he concedes that “it’s notable that he said he wouldn’t do it, because he usually doesn’t do that,” suggesting he has either been “talked into” or “convinced himself that it would be unwise to actually do a military operation.”
Why is Trump so interested in Greenland in the first place? Tune in for Cooper’s best guess, before we then dive into several actions that European nations could take to push back against Trump’s bullying, including painful sanctions against him and his billionaire friends, akin to those that have been implemented against other militaristic tyrants, such as Vladimir Putin. And, there is also the “James Bond” option. Tune in for details. But all of these, as I note to Cooper, would come with considerable danger of U.S. blowback to the EU nations.
“The thing about that,” he tells me, “is that you signal to the other party that you are willing to endure pain in order to stand up for yourself. At a certain point, if you’re in something that is looking like a conflict, If you say, ‘Well, I will not endure any pain myself,’ you’re just giving up. Europe should be ready.”
“It would hurt to pull that lever,” Cooper agrees. “But it is something you have to be ready to do to protect freedom and democracy around the world. Including in the United States.”
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