Transcription
Well, exactly one year ago today, on the day he took the oath of office, an oath he doesn't understand for the second time, Donald Trump pardoned every person who committed crimes for him in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, which led to Donald Trump's own indictment for conspiracy against the United States of America. 1,600 people who committed crimes for Donald Trump were pardoned by Donald Trump on his first day in office, one year. The people who beat policemen and tried to beat policemen to death and threatened to kill Mike Pence. Donald Trump pardoned them all. It was day one of the lawlessness of the Trump presidency.
No one remembers the speech Donald Trump gave one year ago. No one walks around quoting lines from it or a single word from it, as people still do for John F. Kennedy's inauguration speech when Donald Trump was 14 years old. I'm sure Donald Trump, even Donald Trump, can remember that famous line: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." That JFK said when Donald Trump was 14 years old.
No one remembers a word Donald Trump said a year ago, but people will forever remember that that was the day that the president of the United States, for the first time in history, pardoned people who committed crimes for him in an attempt to overthrow a presidential election. That will be what Donald Trump is remembered for. That's what he'll be remembered for doing exactly one year ago, that first day in his second time in the presidency.
Today, Donald Trump stepped up to a microphone on that one-year anniversary of his inauguration. His polling numbers at Trump have sunk over the last year, and he stood before White House reporters with a prop that he literally did not know how to handle, and almost injured himself by touching a binder clip as if for the first time in his life. We saw it appeared to be an exhausted 79-year-old man struggling to pretend to be interested in what he was there to do.
"Here's the book on accomplishments, and this is something. Oh, I'm glad my finger wasn't in that sucker. They could have done some damage, but you know what? I wouldn't have shown the pain. I would have gone back. Boy, did you hear that? That was nasty. But I would not have shown the pain. I would have acted like nothing happened, as my finger fell off. That was a nasty. I think somebody did that. I think it was him. It was my man. How were you? You didn't do it. I know you didn't. I know you didn't. So, but here is the book. These are all things we have. I'm going to read a few of the samples, but look at this. These are all, each line is something that we did. Nobody did that before. And it's big stuff, too. Look, we have the hottest country in the world."
So, the man is not well. He holds up the book that represents all of the accomplishments as presented to him by his staff at the end of one full year of Trump governance, and he treats it like a pizza box he has just personally emptied and throws it on the floor. On the floor. Who does that? He's there to convince the press that this document that he was holding before he threw it away is a serious document, and what he's going to read to us from that document is important. That's what he's trying to convince ourselves. And he throws it on the floor. Just throws it on the floor. Just throws it on the floor.
Donald Trump has the weakest mind we've ever seen in the White House. He's the weakest person ever to live in the White House. He is the crybaby-in-chief. He is not just America's biggest crybaby; he is the world's biggest crybaby. When he's criticized by someone speaking on a television network, he says the entire network should be closed down. What kind of crybaby is that? The worst kind, the adult kind. When he doesn't get a Nobel Peace Prize, which he will never get and will never deserve, he insists that the recipient of the Peace Prize should give it to him, and pathetically, she does. And because he is the weakest, smallest human being we have ever seen in American politics, he stupidly smiles and accepts it as if it actually is his own, as if it's real.
And that crybaby stood there today telling us that for the first time in his life, he would be stoic. He would be brave. He wouldn't flinch if that paper clamp had hurt his finger, one of those little fingers of a crybaby who shows pain whenever he is criticized in any way, whenever he is disagreed with in any way.
What followed at that microphone today was the kind of Trumpian display of ignorance and lying that we have become accustomed to. But now it's the 79-year-old version after a year in the White House, and he is tired. He is weary, and he mixes up words. He says, "Iceland," when he means "Greenland," which we've all done at some point. But that's the kind of thing for which Donald Trump and much of the Washington Press Corps would have attacked Joe Biden for days if he ever mixed up those words. Getting a word wrong like that.
Donald Trump spent an hour and 45 minutes at that microphone in the White House, and the word "Epstein" was never mentioned once in that room. But the word "Greenland" was, which is exactly the way Donald Trump wanted it to be today.
Imagine if Joe Biden or Barack Obama were in the 31st consecutive, it's the executive day of breaking a law that was specifically written to force them to comply with that law. Imagine Joe Biden for 31 days, violating a law passed by Congress requiring him to hand over documents. That's what Donald Trump is doing. Donald Trump is 31 days into violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires him to turn over the Epstein files to Congress, and he didn't get a single question about that today because almost every question was about Greenland, exactly as planned by Donald Trump.
By the time Donald Trump took questions from the White House reporters today, Donald Trump was exhausted, and his answers were shorter than usual. The questions were, as usual, bad. The questions illuminated nothing because, again, as usual, this was Donald Trump's favorite court answer: "We'll see what happens. So, we'll see what happens. But we'll see what happens. We're just going to have to see what happens. But, but, you know, we'll find out."
The overused, exaggerated term "leader of the free world" has never applied to Donald Trump. Donald Trump's governing affections have been showered more on dictators than on the leaders of democracies. The only love letters Donald Trump has exchanged in the White House are with one of the world's most murderous dictators, Kim Jong-un. The governments we think of as the major players in the free world are now all in a trade war with Donald Trump.
And those countries today finally found their voice in a speaker not known for drama or exaggeration, Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney. Mark Carney addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos today and acknowledged humbly that Canada is not, in his view, one of the world's great powers. Canada is not as powerful as the United States or China. The Prime Minister began his speech in French and then switched to English to say, quote, "The power of the less powerful begins with honesty." End quote.
And the honesty the Prime Minister brought to Davos today was to say, "The relationship with the United States no longer works. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons: tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied, the WTO, the UN, the COP. The architecture, the very architecture of collective problem-solving are under threat. A rupture, not a transition."
The United States' most important ally, most important trading partner, the United States' most reliable friend and neighbor, the most reliable friend and neighbor a country could have in this world. Canada now finds itself not in a transition with the United States but in a rupture. On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland's future. Donald Trump's latest unconstitutional tariff insanity is to threaten to impose tariffs on Denmark and its European neighbors, including the United Kingdom, until and unless Donald Trump is allowed to buy Greenland. And Canada says no.
Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world's largest and most sophisticated investors. In other words, we have capital, talent. We also have a government with immense fiscal capacity to act decisively. And we have the values to which many others aspire. The powerful have their power, but we have something too. The capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together. That is Canada's path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us. Thank you very much.