← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
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- [01:01]
Sam Stein
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JVL
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Sam Stein
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- [01:30]
Sam Stein
Hey everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark and I'm joined by JVL and Andrew Egger. We just watched 72 minute speech from Donald Trump followed by a roughly, I don't know, 25, 30 minute Q A session at Davos. A tour de force. I guess the real sort of headline news it would be that he took off. The possibility of a military invasion of Greenland. I think. I don't know Sam. In the context of he would browbeat and economically coerce all the NATO allies into selling it to him. So I guess no troops, but definitely trade wars. You be the judge. We'll see. Nothing's ever done, nothing's ever off the table with this.
- [02:13]
JVL
That's what I mean. He just says everything all the time. I'm sorry, this is, I'm watching all the headlines coming across. People like Trump removes threat of force. And I am sorry, but that is not a thing which happened.
- [02:30]
Sam Stein
Okay, what's your main headline?
- [02:32]
JVL
I to me this is like the moment I, I said this to you guys on slack. I think, remember in September he went and spoke to all the flag officers in the US Military. He called everybody together in Quantico, right? And there was like this stunned silence as a lot of people who, you know, didn't quite understand what he looked like up close saw. And I think that's what the world got today. I mean, if you have just been reading about Donald Trump in the Financial Times, you know, or, or, you know, Deep Site or the Telegraph or the London Times, something, and then you sit down and see this for 78 minutes. I mean, everything now is undeniable. And you see the reality of what America is being led by, and you see that the American constitutional order, which has the power to remove him, but which will not, is broken. Right? It's not just like, oh, there's this old guy. It's that, well, you have two mechanisms in the United States Constitution to remove this insane old person. And, and if it's not happening, that means either the American people support it or the Constitution is broken.
- [03:59]
Andrew Egger
Right?
- [03:59]
Sam Stein
Let me, let me, let me just. So for the people who didn't watch and I'm, I'm envious of you, the, what JBL's talking about is that the speech really meandered in really odd directions and kind of uncomfortable ones at various times. So sure, he may have hinted that the military options off the table, but he also kept confusing Iceland for Greenland. He also trashed NATO allies repeatedly, made some sort of weird analogy to Denmark getting overrun by Nazis and therefore we need Greenland. He threatened Canada, saying that their lives are there but for the grace of the United States, and then pointed to the Prime Minister Mark Con, and said, remember that when you make your nice little speeches. Threaten Emmanuel Macron. He had a weird aside about Ilhan Omar, which I know Andrew wants to get to, that was just totally crazy and wild and inappropriate. He talked about the 2020 elections and said they were rigged and then hinted that there will be prosecutions for the 2020 elections. We're going to play, yeah, we're going to play all this stuff, but that's just to give you a sense of how wild the entire 72.
- [05:05]
JVL
And that's in addition to all of just the baseline lying, right? I mean, all of this like China have any windmills? China's actually has, you know, more, more wind farming than any other country in the world. Like the lie upon, lie upon, lie normal in America. And we all just like, yep. Wow, there he goes again.
- [05:24]
Sam Stein
So, Andrew, what did, what was the. Of all of this? And it's hard to sort of choose elements that Sort of stand out. But was there one or two that stood out for you?
- [05:33]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, I do think that the Greenland, all of the wish casting that is currently happening around that has been really striking to me because it is just kind of true that, like, if he were to cross that Rubicon, there would not really be anything in the immediate term that any of these allies would be able to do about it. It's not like they're going to get into a shooting war with us over Greenland. Probably, probably, who knows? But, but like, so, so everybody is very heavily incentivized to treat Trump's one offhand like, I don't want to send in the troops, I don't want to have to send in the troops. I'm not going to send in the troops as like, oh, he said, he said those words. He said, we're not going to send in the troops. Great. It's problem solved, it's over. You know, everybody can go home. Meanwhile, continues to say, we have to have it, it's non negotiable, we're gonna have it, we need to have it, and it's going to be ours. And then in the Q and A, he gets asked, so what, what's kind of the deal that you're willing to offer Green? Willing to offer Denmark? I mean, Denmark has said, yeah, for sale. But what's the. What, what would be like your.
- [06:29]
Sam Stein
What did he say? I missed that part.
- [06:31]
Andrew Egger
He said, well, if you really think about it, they lose so much money on it anyway. They should be happy to, for us to just take it off their hands. Right. So it's not, it's not like he is actually coming to them with a proposal that's going to make them be like, well, you know, we really didn't want to entertain this, but gosh, it's just so good that, that, that, okay, you know, you've won us over. Art of the deal, Mr. Trump. No, I mean, it's still nothing but threats and, and it's no, it's no carrot all stick, it's these tariffs and, and, and, and like, I just, I just think like, everybody wants to treat that he took it off the table thing as gospel because it would be so insane for him to go forward with that. And maybe he means it, maybe he means that, you never know. But like that.
- [07:08]
Sam Stein
But that's the thing.
- [07:09]
Andrew Egger
We're all still grading him on a curve.
- [07:11]
Sam Stein
Maybe he means it, but maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about. So tee up this video of him seemingly to confuse Greenland And Iceland. And then talking about someone calling him Daddy, who I think was Mark Root, but I'm not totally sure. And then it just. It kind of really synthesized. How weird this whole episode. And was. And, and, and I was just sort of thinking as he did this, I was like, what do the people seated there think? I mean, they're watching this and they must be like, what is going on in his brain?
- [07:39]
Andrew Egger
Let's watch the entire.
- [07:42]
Sam Stein
Just like watching. Yeah, let's watch it in jvl. Pick up after that.
- [07:46]
Donald Trump
Europe. I'm helping NATO. And I've until the last few days. When I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me Daddy, right? Last time, 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.
- [08:20]
Sam Stein
I mean, if you saw that, just.
- [08:22]
JVL
A piece of ice. It's such a small ask. Remember, I'm gonna get you, sucker. Like, you know, how much. How much for one rib? How much can we put the piece of cup. How much for, you know, could you put the cup in my hand? Put the soda in my hands? It's again, the guy, it's like half bullying, half bragging, half grievance. And so he's constantly like, you know, and every. Everybody likes me. Also everybody hates me, and it's unfair that they hate me. And you know, and I this. We have to have Greenland, and we should have Greenland. And it's so important. It's also nothing. It's nothing. It's just this little piece of ice that nobody even cares about. Why can't you just give it to us? Right? Like it's. It's so nothing.
- [09:04]
Donald Trump
Burger.
- [09:06]
JVL
And he does it over and over again in the most insulting way possible. This is the other. The other aspect of it, which is that. And why I really don't believe that the, you know, use of force is off the table.
- [09:20]
Sam Stein
Okay?
- [09:20]
JVL
There are ways to. If what you really want to do is persuade people, there are ways to do that. You, you don't, for instance, insult the country. You don't insult the people of Greenland. You don't insult the people of Denmark, which is, by the way, what Scott Besant did. Did you guys catch that today? He called Denmark irrelevant. That's great. Awesome. And then so. And another thing you do is you make an offer, right? You say, we will. We'll give you $800 billion for it. What do you say? Let's, let's start a negotiation. Right. The things he's doing do not seem like they're designed to get to a trans action. They are extortion. And so if he's serious about really wanting this thing, then there are only 2, 2 possible outcomes. One of which is that the Europeans give in to the extortion, which I think it's pretty clear now they're not going to. And the other of which is that he takes it.
- [10:22]
Sam Stein
Extortion is. Extortion is the appropriate word because he doesn't know diplomacy, he doesn't know carrots. He admitted it in the Q and A. He said, rob, Marco, Ruby, have to teach me diplomacy. And so everything's extortion. And you could tell he was seething a little bit about some of the speeches yesterday because they weren't giving into the extortion. That was particularly the case with Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada, who, Andrew, you wrote about it today. Why don't you talk a little bit about morning shots? Because that speech really stood as a bookend to Trump's basically saying we have to establish, I'm going to use the phrase a new world order. But it's like basically that's what he was saying in which the middle ground countries kind of band you together. So talk a little bit about the significance of that speech.
- [11:11]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, I mean, the basic line from Mark Carney yesterday was we have spent close to a century in this world where America leads the free world politically and economically and geostrategically. And it is increasingly clear that that is no longer a viable model for countries like ours, for mid sized countries, mid market countries to sign up for and sign onto. And it used to be the case that you had basically these in recent years, like two poles of trade, right? There was America and then there was this growing thing of China and other sort of like emerging economies that were more authoritarian. And America was always trying to talk everybody into staying onside. You know, like we're going to marginalize them or we are going to maintain these sorts of like global standards and things like that. And the basically what we're seeing happen now is instead of treating those like two ends of a poll guy or two to two poles on one spectrum of free to not free economies. Carney's new model is the hegemons. It's the hegemons, by which he means America and China that are now pushing around the little guys. And the little guys are going to need to band together in order to stand any chance of withstanding hegemonic power, which, again, he doesn't just be in China. I mean, it's such an amazing, amazing change here. And on that topic, I think one of the things that just really stood out to me watching the speech today was when you get guys like Xi Jinping from China or Vladimir Putin who will come to these international meetups of the honchos, whether it's at the World Economic Forum or the UN or whatever, and they will basically lie, right? I mean, they will, they will talk a good game about democratic values. And the thing that is wrong is that they are not actually putting them into practice at home. They're being hypocritical about it, but they are at least still talking a good game about all these democratic values. I mean, hypocrisy is the, is the tribute vice pays to virtue, right? I mean, there's, they, they run their countries with the understanding that, like, we can get away with a certain amount of stuff by, by towing certain lines and bending others, right? And what Trump has been doing when he comes in here, I mean, like, he does not pay. He, he pays no lip service to virtue at all.
- [13:27]
Sam Stein
He, it's points for honesty. Points for honesty.
- [13:29]
Andrew Egger
And let me bring up Ilhan Omar here because this is, this was the most jaw dropping thing to me is that in this speech to world leaders at Davos. At Davos, sorry, I haven't pronounced this once correctly in the last two days. Been getting a lot of shit about it. But he's here and he brings up this grievance with a random domestic lawmaker in his own congress at home. He calls her a fake congressperson. He says, Ilhan Omar talking about, oh, the Constitution provides me. She comes from a country that's not a country and she's telling us how to run America. Not going to get away with it much longer. Can we, let me tell you, can you imagine Putin or Xi coming to, coming to an international forum and, and like saying things like that about one of his lawmakers, even though he controls, even though they have so much more actual despotic control over those bodies, they would never in a million years come.
- [14:23]
Sam Stein
I was just sort of wondering about the crowd there. I mean, a bunch of international figures and government officials being like, who the fuck is Ilhan Omar? Like, what is he talking about? Like, do they know who this woman is? So it's so random and inconsequential for them.
- [14:37]
JVL
Can I, can I rant about something, Sam?
- [14:40]
Sam Stein
Sure. Well, is it about Carney? Because I have the clip of Trump now responding to the carnage speech. If you want to use no, do the carney.
- [14:47]
JVL
We'll go back. It's not carney.
- [14:48]
Sam Stein
Okay, so here's how. So here's how Trump responds to the Carney address from the. From the lectern today.
- [14:55]
Donald Trump
That's going to, just by its very nature, going to be defending Canada. Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also. But they're not. I watch your prime minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful that they should be grateful to us. Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that mark the next time you make your statements.
- [15:21]
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- [16:22]
Sam Stein
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Andrew Egger
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- [16:33]
Sam Stein
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- [16:35]
Andrew Egger
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- [16:37]
JVL
Nice little country you got there. Be a shame if something happened to it. It's like, is there any other way to. Is there any other way to interpret that?
- [16:47]
Sam Stein
No. Zero way. Zero way. I mean, that's it. He's saying it. He's saying, you live but for the grace of us. What does that mean? You're not going to live anymore. That's logical occlusion. So, yeah, that. That was the. That was the undercurrent of the entire speech. Basically, threats to NATO saying NATO's not grateful enough, trashing NATO. Canada's not grateful enough, trashing Canada. He had some apocryphal tale about tariffs with the, some leader of Switzerland and he made fun of Emmanuel Macron's glasses. And then he went into weird conspiracies around the 2020 elections. We'll get to those later. But JVL, you want to go off on something? Floor is yours.
- [17:27]
JVL
Yeah, yeah. So I don't know, maybe three quarters of the way through during one of his attacks on NATO he he posited that it is a one sided alliance because America would come to NATO's defense, the countries in NATO, but he doesn't think that they would come to our defense in America. And this is so unbelievably offensive because we, we just did this 20 years ago. I don't, you know, maybe nobody remembers it, but after 911 the countries of NATO of their own accord decided to throw in and commit troops and give hundreds of the lives of their countrymen in Afghanistan and Iraq to aid the US project. Hundreds of people from Great Britain, from Denmark, from France died, soldiers who went to fight in those wars on behalf of America's interests. And for the President United States to stand up there and say oh, I don't think that you would come and, and help us if we needed it after that, I. What? Well, he doesn't understand of us. He also doesn't understand.
- [18:46]
Sam Stein
Yeah, but he doesn't understand how NATO works.
- [18:48]
Andrew Egger
Right?
- [18:48]
Sam Stein
I mean he, he thinks that everyone deposits some sort of money into some joint account that's used for collective defense and that no one was paying into it beforehand. And so that's, you know, but he also, he doesn't understand the history as you know, doesn't realize that NATO was there for us the only time article 5 has been used. So a very sincere lack of historical knowledge and understanding there outcomes. There's word now that the EU US trade deal is on ice. This did not shockingly resolve it. Trump speech at Davos. They've halted the approval of US trade deal after his Greenland tariff threat. So that's that. As Andrew noted, Canada is being driven into the arms of China. There's more trade deals being done between Europe directly with South American countries. We are seeing, Andrew, the isolation of the US on an economic footing in a way that I don't think is appreciated actually.
- [19:46]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, and, and we saw baby steps toward this during Trump's first term. Right. I mean there were, there were these trade wars. They did reorganize certain amounts of global trade and it went kind of unremarked upon. But like even all through Biden, there were like fissures that had opened up that were never refilled. I mean like the, the US Agriculture was, was never the same after the trade war with China. And, and, and it still isn't the same today. I mean we're back to like making all of these, these, you know, billion dollar buyouts of, of, of farmers think things like that. But, but the lesson of that is that like once the rest of the world makes alternative arrangements, even if the barriers do all fall off and another president does declare the US Open for business three years from now, it doesn't all just come roaring back overnight. You know, the US still, still is an extremely wealthy country. There will always be people or there are likely always to be people who will want to do business here. But that does not get you to replacement level once, once these new structures have been put in place. So really like the time would have to be now. And this is what we, this is what we talked about yesterday. I mean like Trump is, Trump is making this, this pitch. He's, he's, he's taken the US out of the US led global order. There are mechanisms, JBL mentioned it a minute ago. There are mechanisms intrinsic to our process that could in theory stop it and they are impeachment and which 25th amendment. Those are the, those which would not.
- [21:14]
JVL
Turn the presidency over to the Democratic Party.
- [21:16]
Andrew Egger
Give it to JD VAN this is.
- [21:18]
JVL
What right this is again. Yeah. I mean it isn't, it isn't the case that like, oh well, why would Republicans do that? Why would they hand power to Democrats? It would have handed power to other Republicans.
- [21:28]
Sam Stein
Yeah. And it's just, come on, I'll be skeptical.
- [21:31]
Andrew Egger
Nobody's saying it's going to happen. Of course it's not going to happen. No, of course it's not going to happen. But just, just think about it in these terms. Like, like the fact that it's not going to happen doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider the fact that they could do it at any time. Right. It would go to JD and you look at him up there and he's insane and he's old and he's washed and he's doddering and he's rambling and he has no energy. And he keeps calling Greenland Iceland because earlier in the speech he said that Greenland was a big beautiful piece of ice and it one shot at his brain and like he just doesn't have what he had before. And, and we are, we are living in a world where he keeps getting away with it just because of the, of the like assumptions and presuppositions of all these people who, who have it all baked in now in Congress and in his cabinet that like we're just gonna hunker down and wait till he goes away and by then it's just going to be too late. So that let me the way it.
- [22:21]
Sam Stein
Is, let me throw a little curve in here and you guys can noodle on it and stealing from Benji Sarlin a little bit. But there is one potential other check here that has happened before and appears to have happened in this instance, which is the markets. And when the markets go south, he tends to notice, doesn't like the coverage on cnbc and then he course corrects a little bit. And so we're going to actually play the clip of him taking military action off the table. But he did reference the fact, albeit he confused Iceland and Greenland, he did reference the fact that the markets didn't like what he was saying. And so I want to play the clip and then I want JVL to address whether the markets still play a role here in terms of affecting Trump's thinking. But let's play the clip of him talking about military action off the table here.
- [23:11]
Donald Trump
Ask for anything and we never got anything. 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. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland where we already had it as a trustee, but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago, after we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and others In World War II, we gave it back to them. We were a powerful force then, but we are a much more powerful force now.
- [24:05]
Sam Stein
All right, so look, he seems to have been impacted by the, the very, very terrible day that the stock market had yesterday around this stuff. I'm assuming that Scott Besant and others are tripping in his ear that this is not helping him out, that, you know, you have like 30 year yield going up. You don't want your domestic economy to suffer because you have some sort of fixation with, you know, invading Greenland. Is it true JVL to this point that he still is impacted by the markets.
- [24:37]
JVL
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, he clearly pays attention to the stock market. The problem isn't the stock market, it's the bond market. And this is unsatisfactory to people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about finance. But the bond market is where all tail risk lives. And that is the cost of US Debt. It's a little harder to understand, it's a little bit more opaque, but it drives everything. And he was bragging about how low mortgage rates had gotten. Well, they're back up. And they're back up because he's threatening Greenland. I mean, this is literally, you can't buy a house, as somebody on Twitter or Blue sky said, you can't afford a house because Trump is threatening Greenland. And that sounds like literally true, but it's literally the case. And the problem is that I don't know that bond markets can be fooled. And like, he's still doing this stuff. He's still creating these trade wars. And all of these alternative pathways are going to, as, as Andrew said, are going to get created. And once they're created, these alternative routes of trade and agreements and arrangements, you don't go back. You don't go back from this. Anyway, continue to watch the bond markets as I look for and think about what could really blow up a Trump presidency. One of the things is the bond market explodes. And so if Japan and a bunch of EU countries decide that they're going to not participate in the next treasury auction, that would be enormous. If Canada decides it wants to dump US Treasuries, and it'll hold an enormous amount of Treasuries.
- [26:29]
Sam Stein
Explain the treasury auction, what, what that actually means, because I think a lot of people watching. So what is that? What are you talking about?
- [26:35]
JVL
Okay, so the United States issues Treasury bills. These are debt. This is how we borrow money. And the way that does it is it holds an auction in which it is setting yield rates. So it's saying, if you give us $100, we'll give you back $107 in three years time, five years time, 10 years time, et cetera, et cetera. In general, the higher the yield that America needs to pay in order to convince people to buy these Treasuries, that is a sign that people view us as a bad credit risk. And so when there is confidence in America, the yield is low. When there is uncertainty, the yield goes high. What you could see if you have a bunch of big. Because many of the people who purchase treasury bills at auction are in fact sovereign states. If they decide they are not going to come to bid at auction, that means that the debt is not desirable and the price, the yield is going to have to go up by quite a lot. Another thing you could see is big institutional holders like for instance, Canada and Japan dumping Treasuries, which would again drive, drive the yields very, very high. And you have that happening and all of a sudden you get to the potential of like, well, holy shit, America can't borrow money anymore at rates that are anything like what we've historically been used to, to borrowing at. At which point, like the whole house of cards could kind of come down, right? I mean, that is like extinction level event type stuff.
- [28:11]
Andrew Egger
And can I say, hold on, just.
- [28:12]
Sam Stein
Quickly to your point, just quickly to your point, because it was flagged for me. But Sweden's pension fund is, has said it' divesting most of its holdings in Treasuries and has been doing so since 2025. And it's macroeconomic risks. But I do wonder if it's just sort of a lay of the land survey of US domestic politics, right? They look at what's happening and say, this is not any way to conduct business. Terrorists are going on, tests, going off. This is a good way to play the, the 2020 election subversion clip. Because if you watch Trump, I mean, what he's talking about is just, you know, a, a US political scene that is completely unpredictable, done with retribution. If you were an outside investor, you'd look at this and you would say, wait a second, you're going to actually go after people in the other political party. You're going to, you know, take stakes in businesses like, why would we invest in this? So let's play the 2020 election clip and then, Andrew, you take it on the other side.
- [29:06]
Donald Trump
It's a war that should have never started, and it wouldn't have started if the 2020 US presidential election weren't rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It's probably breaking news, but it should be. It was a rigged election. Can't have rigged elections. You need strong borders, strong elections and ideally a good press. I always say it. Strong borders, strong elections, free, fair elections and a fair media. The media is terrible. It's very crooked, it's very biased, terrible. But some data will straighten out because it's losing all credibility. Think of it. When I went in a landslide, a giant landslide, won all seven swing States won the popular vote, won everything. And they only get negative press. That means that it has no credibility. And if they're going to get credibility, they're going to have to be fair. So you need a fair press.
- [30:07]
Sam Stein
All right.
- [30:08]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. I wonder how do you suppose he got the idea that these prosecutions are coming down the pipe? I'm sure Pam Bondi's not sure. The information, I mean, like, that's, that's, that must just be like an educated guess on, on his part. No, I mean, like this, you're, you're, you're absolutely right. And like, all this stuff is the reason why this whole argument of, like, well, you know, if he does anything that, like, truly instantaneously puts global markets on the brink of total collapse, he will pull back from that. Like, it is so unsatisfying as a, as a reassurement, like, just to take a step back and, and consider that that is the one, like, countervailing suggestion that we should maybe be consoling ourselves with that if there's anything that would immediately destroy everything all at once. He will see markets, you know, puke on that. And he'll be like, well, maybe not that one. And it's like, it's like, I don't know, it's like going to a doctor and you have this doctor recommended, and it's like every once in a while he'll like, freak out and, like, cut off your arm, but then he will, like, he'll slap a tourniquet on that baby like, so fast, and he does such a good job back up, and it's like, well, first of all, that's, that's not very assuring on its own merits. But also that has, that, that has nothing to do with whether or not he is actually a good. It's not like, it's not like that fact suggests he's a great doctor all the rest of the time. And all this stuff, like most, most economic policy, is not that kind of thing. It's not the kind of thing that immediately ruins everything, is the kind of thing that starts certain boulders rolling down certain hills slowly at first and then faster and faster and faster. And by the time it is obvious that they are, like, hurtling downhill at horrible speeds, it's far too late to stop them. And that is much more so than the stuff that, that's about to instantly crash the economy. That is the story of world trade right now, as everybody just tries to get around what is supposed to be like, the normal, rational. He's come down from the hill consensus of a 15% tariff here, a 35% tariff here, there a little threat to invade Greenland over. Here we go and get Maduro over there. I'm going to threaten Ilhan Omar, I'm going to threaten Jim Comey and I'm going to threaten Liz Cheney and like. And it's just, it's one thing after another after another after another after another. And then you turn around and you, and you realize you are in a world where the United States is not seen as a safe place to do business and not a very profitable place to do business business either for all of these reasons. And then it's too late.
- [32:22]
JVL
Yeah. And also shouldn't be lost in all this. He did talk about his pick for Fed chair and one of the things he said was that, you know, that his Fed chair is going to have to be somebody who's going to do the right things and is going to lower interest rates. And again, it's like telling the global audience and hey, I'm going to try to make sure the central bank isn't independent. Well, what the fuck do you think is going to happen? Right. You know the market's going to react to that.
- [32:52]
Sam Stein
Andrew, if Trump is the doctor, what's the tourniquet and who's the arm?
- [32:58]
Andrew Egger
The chopping off the arm is invading Greenland militarily and the tourniquet is pulling back. I guess, I don't know, I'm not a big analogies guy. It just seemed like a thing to.
- [33:04]
Sam Stein
Say still, like, you need to land that plane, buddy. If you're going to go into a big analogy about that, you gotta stand by it.
- [33:09]
Andrew Egger
I think it works.
- [33:11]
Sam Stein
All right. To wrap this up because we don't want to go as long as Trump did. We, we're already seeing some file here. You, like I mentioned earlier, is canceling its trade deal. I have to imagine that Carney continues sort of charting out the path that he does. I don't think he goes back from something like that. What are the next shoes to drop? Where does this go from here? I, I know, jv, you don't think military is off the table for Greenland, but what do you think is next? How does this play out?
- [33:40]
JVL
I don't know. I mean, I don't think military is off the table. I have sort of thought that one of the, I mean, you could see a bunch of different ways it plays out in Greenland, one of which is he just Gulf of America's it and he says it's ours. Yeah. And you know, like I'm Hereby instructing everybody, you will lose your White House press credentials if you do not refer to Greenland as US Territory. Now, I mean, that, that's a thing he could do. And it sounds insane, but is it any. Would that be any more insane than everything we've already seen?
- [34:12]
Sam Stein
I would take that solution. It's like the least.
- [34:15]
JVL
Another thing he could do is he could, he could like, expand outward a little bit from, from the base and so from the Space Force base that's already there. He could like push out and say, well, we're just going to move the fences 20ft and say that we now have more of it. Right. It's, it's all, it all becomes disputed territory. That's entirely possible as well. But if he's serious, again, this is the problem. He's saying over and over again that it is absolutely vital to America's national security that we have complete and total control of the entire island. There's no climb down from that. There's no, like. Well, and so if that's his position, then his choices are to annex it or, or change that.
- [35:02]
Andrew Egger
That's it. Well, but there is, isn't there one other possibility here, which is just that he loses focus and wanders away and starts paying more attention to. I mean, that's what happened last year, right? That's, I mean, he, he was making a lot of noises right in early, before he even took office, like, we're going to have to have it. It's going to have to be ours. Totally vital to our national security. But he is not a disciplined thinker. He does not. I mean, this, Greenland is not a Stephen Miller priority, Right? The Stephen Miller priorities are the ones that, that continue to get pushed forward even when the President stops noticing them and like, wanders off to redecorate a ballroom or something like that. So I do think that is the one thing that I think some, there's a reason why NATO is still mostly like, fixing their, like, rictus grins in place and being like, sure, Donald, that.
- [35:48]
JVL
Won'T change NATO's future plans.
- [35:49]
Andrew Egger
100%. 100%.
- [35:50]
JVL
Like, there's no ringing that Greenland is still disputed territory. This is, I wrote about this yesterday, right? And at this point, Greenland is disputed territory now, and it is not, you know, nobody can just assume that America doesn't have a claim on it because America has a claim on it. This claim is being made by the President of the United States, the duly elected President of the United States. It is being echoed by the President's party. And until such time as it is renounced, or there is legislation preventing the annexation from Greenland, or we withdraw our military base on Greenland, Nobody can assume that we are more than a single election away from another Republican pursuing that claim being made on this disputed territory.
- [36:35]
Sam Stein
Okay, well, we'll be watching it. This was fun, just for the historians say.
- [36:39]
JVL
Was it, Sam? Was it fun?
- [36:41]
Sam Stein
Well, this part was fun. Not watching it.
- [36:43]
Andrew Egger
I always like talking to you guys.
- [36:45]
Sam Stein
72 minutes. 72 minutes for Trump, 34 minutes for us. The longest speech at the UN assembly, everyone knows was Castro, but can you off the top of your head, tell me how long it went?
- [37:01]
JVL
Didn't he do like 3 hours?
- [37:05]
Sam Stein
More.
- [37:05]
JVL
More Castro? I mean, this is. Catcher was famous for this. Like, he was. So Catcher would do dinners and his dinners, he would invite people to. To be his guest for dinner and his dinners would be this. It would just be monologue. He'd monologue for hours at dinner. Nobody else was allowed to talk. So I can't even imagine what did he do with the un?
- [37:22]
Sam Stein
Sorry, is that, is that not normal? That's what I do at home. That's what I DO at the UN. It was 269 minutes, which is 4.5 hours. Can you imagine? I would have died. I would have had to pee, get up and go. OMAR Gaddafi did 96 minutes one time in 2009 at the UN. So Trump, not quite there yet. Not quite there yet. Some goals to strive for for our President. Andrew JVL thank you guys so much for those who watched and endured. The dream lives on. Thank you for doing that. Subscribe to the Bulwark Hit that button. Share like we appreciate it as always. Talk to you next time.