Transcription
GOOD EVENING FROM NEW YORK. I'M CHRIS HAYES.
DONALD TRUMP LOVES NOTHING MORE THAN TO START A CRISIS THAT HE COULD THEN CLAIM CREDIT FOR SOLVING. It's a go-to move of his and today we've got the latest example of this on the world stage. Trump spoke to fellow global leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, ranting about how much he wanted to own Greenland, insulting all the European countries who've objected, going into weird tangents of like gutter racism, generally embarrassing himself and all of us once again on the world stage.
It's a familiar refrain now, an obsession of his. He's basically threatening to take Greenland by force the way that Hitler rolled into Czechoslovakia and Putin rolled into Ukraine. Same idea. It has brought the NATO alliance to the brink. It has spooked stock markets. It has even led Canada, yes, Canada, to formulate a military plan for dealing with the U.S. invasion.
Then today, having stared the united European opposition in the face, having seen the S&P stock index lose all its gains on the year in one day, having seen poll numbers that show 86% of Americans do not want to go to war over Greenland, Donald Trump started a walk back that ended in a total retreat. It started with one line in his speech that seemed unlike all the others. "We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable, but I won't do that. Okay?"
Now everyone's saying, "Oh, good. That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force. Okay." Again, this is Donald Trump speaking. So, like, should you listen to him? It was of course a sentiment belied by everything else he said in his speech and almost everything else his administration has said about Greenland in recent weeks. On Monday, just to cite one example, the Department of Defense was posting AI photos of American soldiers and bombings and bombers invading a snowy mountainous land. On Tuesday, when a reporter asked what lengths he would go to to acquire Greenland, he said, "You'll find out."
And then shortly after that speech today, Trump took to social media to announce full retreat. "Quote, Based upon a very productive meeting that I've had with the secretary, the secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte. We haven't formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and in fact, the entire Arctic region. Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st. Additional discussions are being held concerning the Golden Dome as it pertains to Greenland. I forgot about that part. Further information will be made available as discussions progress."
What? What does that mean? I don't know. Honestly, I think it's pretty clear Trump doesn't either. "Well, we have a concept of a deal. I think it's going to be a very good deal for the United States also for them. And we're going to work together on something having to do with the Arctic as a whole, but also Greenland. And it has to do with the security, great security, strong security and other things." That's Trump earlier in an interview with CNBC at Davos.
So it's a concept of a framework of a future deal, and it does not sound like Trump is getting Greenland. He's getting talks about Arctic security in return. He is not waging a trade war on Europe this time and apparently not going to invade Greenland. Now, what happened? And again, we've been through this cycle a few times. Markets rallied on that news. People breathed a sigh of relief, and who could blame them? That's not how the day started, right?
Trump did himself no favors today. He gave an hour-long rant in which he blasted NATO while repeatedly confusing, and this is really key, Greenland with Iceland. "Until the last few days when I told him about Iceland, they loved me. They called me Daddy, right? Last time? A very smart man said he's our Daddy. He's running it. I was like, running it. I went from running it to being a terrible human being. But now what I'm asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located, that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection. I don't know that they'd be there for us. They're not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland's already cost us a lot of money. What are you talking about?"
When a reporter noted how Trump misspoke, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt responded, "No, he didn't. His remarks, written remarks, referred to Greenland as a piece of ice because that's what it is." Levitt included a shot of an iceberg that she apparently found when googling Greenland. Well done.
That was the culmination of a humiliating week for the U.S. in Davos. On Tuesday night, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was heckled at a World Economic Forum dinner in Davos with European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde walking out during his speech. That dinner was reportedly called off before dessert. The Commerce Department's only response was, "Quote, Only one person booed and it was Al Gore." Which, if true, good for him.
Yesterday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a really stirring speech in Davos about the middle powers like Canada of the world moving on from U.S. leadership, announcing that the rules-based order is basically dead. Multiple EU nations moved troops to Greenland in recent days, making it clear to Trump that an attack on the island would be an attack on all of Europe. And just before Trump's speech today, European lawmakers agreed to indefinitely freeze the trade agreement that Trump had struck with them last summer. In other words, Europe pushed back and called Trump's bluff, and he was isolated and humiliated, and on a dime, he backed down. "From only America can protect Greenland and I need to have it psychologically because I want to feel big. To let's have great talks on Greenland. But we've been here before."
Like I said at the top, this is a pattern. We saw it last year. Trump announced his arbitrary tariffs on the entire world, including uninhabited islands. Remember? So-called Liberation Day. Markets tanked. People panicked. Trump met resistance, both at home and abroad. He kept delaying the date when the tariffs would kick in. He started lowering his arbitrary tax rates on individual countries, essentially negotiating with himself. And his tendency to back down under pressure on tariffs even earned him the nickname on Wall Street, TACO, as in Trump Always Chickens Out. That was called the TACO trade.
What we know from experience is Trump will push as far and as hard as he can until he meets. He doesn't understand consent. He will just do what he can to people until he meets some force resisting him. And it's okay, I think, to breathe a sigh of relief today. But when you zoom out, it's a toxic and dangerous cycle. I mean, Trump backed off his worst terror threats, but not before doing huge damage to international alliances, driving up inflation, squeezing American consumers and small businesses, taking a sledgehammer to the American auto industry, pushing China to make a deal with Canada. I mean, we are worse off than when he started the tariff day crisis and then solved it. Definitely in every way. So backing off the worst-case scenario, is it hardly comforting?
Now we find ourselves in the same situation. Okay. We're not going to have a war of conquest in Greenland in which young American service members are shooting and killing Danes for some reason, and Danes and shooting or killing American service members so that we can steal a piece of land that is not ours. Phew. But this whole screechingly stupid affair has fundamentally altered, and some would say I think rightly destroyed, the American-led rules-based global order that's held since World War II.
The fundamental lesson here is that the crisis isn't over until Donald Trump's regime is no longer in power, because he will keep pushing every day for whatever he can get away with. And really, honestly, whatever. Be imaginative when you think about what that could be. He will do that until he's really opposed, which means you have to have unified resistance on the other side. And I think if there's one silver lining from this whole despicable mess, global leaders now understand that in a similar way that it took a while for American institutions to graph, and some still haven't, you cannot just price in that he will back down on his own because sometimes he does go all the way. Like after he lost the 2020 election and called it rigged, and many people who should have known better said, "What's the harm in humoring him?" The harm was that he tried to violently overthrow the United States government because his self-serving lies didn't meet enough resistance. If Donald Trump thinks he can get away with it, he will do it. Ask E. Jean Carroll. When he is at his most reckless, the only check on his power at home and abroad is total, constant, eternal vigilance.