← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
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- [01:59]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
On Saturday morning, United States President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to issue what sounds like the beginning of a trade war and an ultimatum to Europe and Denmark and Greenland. I'm jvl here with my Bulwark colleague Will Salatan, and we're going to go through all of it because this stuff is insane. I'm going to read to you, Will, some selections from this long Truth Social post by the President of the United States. We have subsidized Denmark and all of the countries of the European Union and others for many years by not charging them tariffs or any other form of remuneration. Now, after centuries, it is time for Denmark to give back. World peace is at stake. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland have journeyed to Greenland for purposes unknown. This is a very dangerous situation for the safety, security and survival of our planet. These countries who are playing this very dangerous game have put a level of risk in play that's not tenable or sustainable. Therefore, it is imperative that in order to protect global peace and security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly and without question. Now it goes on to the trade war. Starting on February 1, 2026, all of the above mentioned countries will be charged a 10% tariff on any and all goods sent to the United States of America. On June 1, 2026, the tariff will be increased to 25%. The tariff will be due and payable until such time as a deal is reached for the complete and total purchase of. Of Greenland. Will. I'll let you cook first.
- [03:52]
Will Saletan
Okay. This is insane. What's happened here is until today, Trump's position about Greenland was the Russians and the Chinese have all these ships and forces around there. He wildly exaggerated it, and therefore the United States must protect Greenland from them. Today is the first day that Donald Trump has said, no, no, no, no, no. The Europeans, NATO countries are sending forces. He, he, he doesn't explain why. A journey, for reasons unknown, the. The Europeans basically took Donald Trump up on his demand that they defend Greenland from the Russians and the Chinese. So they're sending forces to Greenland to say, hey, we can do it. Trump's response is that that is a hostile action.
- [04:39]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Yep.
- [04:39]
Will Saletan
He's pretty, pretty clearly saying. And he's treating them as the threat. And correct me if I'm wrong, jbl, this sounds like the Cuban Missile Crisis. This, they've created this untenable situation, and we're going to escalate to drive them out.
- [04:51]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
This is a very important escalation here because prior to this morning, prior to Saturday morning, the administration's position has been, we are going to get a deal on Greenland. It's going to be a big, beautiful deal that everybody's going to be very happy with. One way or another. It's going to happen. They're going to sell it to us. They're going to agree to sell it to us. Of course, military force is always on the table.
- [05:18]
Will Saletan
Right.
- [05:18]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
But it has been. There has been no coercion. Right. The idea has been like, we're going to we're going to make them an offer so good that they'll love it. Now by saying that we're going to punish you until you accept an offer. That's different. That's a different thing. That is not just an optimistic, hey, we know that we're all going to get to yes because when you say that the other party, your counterparty can still theoretically say no. This is a, you're not going to say no because we are laying out what the punishments for saying no are so that we're no longer in a free and fair deal. This is now we're going an open admission that the United States is going to coerce Denmark and Greenland into transferring sovereignty to America. All right, let's go backwards because a lot has happened this week, beginning with Wednesday when delegates from the European Union from Greenland and Denmark met with Vice President J.D. vance and Marco Rubio. And this is what the Danish Foreign Minister Lars Loki Rasmussen said at a news conference after that closed door meeting. It's clear the President has this wish of conquering Greenland. Conquering. It's clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland. We made it very, very clear that this is not in the interest of the kingdom. Not mincing any words. No, like, well, we had a full and productive conversation. And I mean just so if that's what the diplomat again Foreign minister, Secretary of State, like when you are in the diplomatic world, your job is to always leave yourself wiggle room and stuff. If that's what he was willing to say publicly, you can only imagine what was being said to him by I, I wonder, Will, do you think J.D. vance said, have you even said thank you once?
- [07:25]
Will Saletan
That's, that's an optimistic view of what went on in the room. The, the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers came out, they said that, they also said that we, we didn't quite, we, you know, it was a great meeting even though we didn't get acquiescence to our red lines. And when they described their red line, the red line was sovereignty. It was respect for the sovereignty of other countries and respect for the autonomy for the self discrimination of the Greenlanders. So that is what J.D. vance and Marco Rubio refused to accept. The minimum, a bare moral civilizational minimum of respecting sovereignty. That's amazing.
- [08:09]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Well, it's because Donald Trump can't grant that. Right. His worldview is that the only person with sovereignty is Donald Trump.
- [08:16]
Will Saletan
Right.
- [08:17]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
And so by extension only America has sovereignty provided Donald Trump is president. Right. And once Donald Trump ceases to become president. Well, then, you know, America, just like any other country. And so what happened after that is that we got word that Europe was starting to send small delegations of military troops from France, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Sweden, showing up to Greenland starting on Thursday. Again, these are. They're not moving in artillery. Like, these are very, very small groups. A lot of them are officers doing consulting. I mean, we're talking about dozens, right? Maybe scores of military personnel. Nobody's bringing a battalion in. But then on Thursday, Manuel Macron, president of France, said that his country would be sending further land, air, and sea assets. Again, just sort of leaving it a little bit open like that. This feels like a prelude to war. I mean, I just don't know how to write. I mean, this is what those things look like. They don't always end in war, right? But it always starts like this.
- [09:29]
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- [10:29]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
The idea that Donald Trump is creating this and then doing the thing that authoritarians always do. They create the hostile situation and then claim the existence of that hostile situation as pretext for why they have to invade, which is when I say they, this is what Vladimir Putin did in Georgia and in Ukraine. This is gray zone warfare. Except that the United States is doing the gray zone warfare.
- [10:57]
Will Saletan
Right. First of all, to your point about creating the hostile situation, the Europeans are doing what Trump asked them to do. Trump, in this statement, as you just read it, he says, you know, they have a. They have a Couple of dog sleds up there. He's ridiculing the absence of military force by Denmark protecting Greenland from Russia and China. So the Europeans respond by, okay, okay, you want us to show that we can defend Greenland, we're going to send some forces up there. Trump's response to them doing what he implied that they should do is to call that a hostile act and treat it as so. As you say, he's just trying to provoke a confrontation. But let me pick up on your point about Putin, because I think that's very astute. You mentioned, you alluded before to JD Vance saying, you know, how come you haven't thanked the president? That was Vance and Trump ambushing Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, back in a year ago, basically in the, in the Oval Office. And Trump said there to the, to Zelensky, you don't have the cards. Who has the cards? The country with the power, Russia. So what Trump is doing now is saying to NATO, we, the United States have the cards. You don't have the cards. And the country with the cards, which is Russia and Ukraine, US In Greenland gets to move in and take what we want.
- [12:11]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Right. This is, this is a fully new vision of American foreign policy. Like, it is a totally new American foreign policy doctrine. And it's clear as day. And it is weird that there are a couple people in the administration, like Pete Hegseth, who, who get close to inching up, to saying it out loud, but they still can't do it. There's still this, like, reflexive Reaganite, but they have to pretend that it's all about freedom and peace and stuff, but it isn't. This is just domination, law of the jungle stuff. Like, there is no international order except for guns. And the person with the navy and the most guns and the most nukes, they get to do what they want. That's the new foreign policy doctrine of the United States.
- [12:54]
Will Saletan
Right? So the person whose fingerprints you can see on this statement is Stephen Miller. And I say that because there are certain phrases in the truth, social post, strong measures must be taken. Especially the phrase without question. This is one of Stephen Miller's favorite. Without question, America will dominate. Everyone must do what we say. And that phrase appears as here in terms of acceding to America's demands. So I suspect he's involved in it. But can I pick up on what you said about this is brand new. So I don't know as much history as you do about American foreign policy. If we go back to the 19th century, right.
- [13:27]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I'm sorry I say brand new. I don't, I don't mean, I mean brand new in like the post war order, right? This is, I don't mean in the history of the world. Like this stuff is how the world used to be run once upon a time. And then we built this rules based order that began, you know, it was slowly being built after World War I and the attempts to leave nations then after World War II. And people are like, we can't do this anymore. We need rules because otherwise we are slitting the throat of our own civilization. And so I'm sorry, when I say it's all brand new, I just meant it's all brand new for anybody who, who is living now or had grandparents, you know, within the last 80 plus years. So I apologize.
- [14:13]
Will Saletan
No, no, no, but, but that, that was true of Latin America. But you could argue it is new as it applies to Europe, I mean as other countries that were empires. I mean we fought, when's the last time we fought the British and for, you know, it's been a couple of centuries. So it, that does look new to me. I wonder if this is jbl. I'm remembering right after Trump invaded Venezuela and got rid of Maduro. The reporters asked him, well, is Greenland next? What are you thinking about Greenland? And at that time he said, who's talking about Greenland? I'm not thinking about Greenland, but it seems like the Venezuela invasion, the success of it has gone to his head. Do you think that there's a cause and effect there?
- [14:57]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Well, I mean, I think it, it's proof of concept, right? I mean, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't put it as like success has gone to a head. I would call it proof of concept that you can do this. And the fact that he was able to very seamlessly pick up and the reason he's been able to do it in and is because there is no nation building, there is no bringing democracy. He didn't even topple the regime. He just swapped out dictators for one that will work with him. Right. And if that's your view of the world, that you just want the dictator who's going to do what you, you tell them to do, well, that's a little easier to manage.
- [15:35]
Will Saletan
Right?
- [15:35]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
You can, that's the question is just like, is that what America is?
- [15:40]
Rakuten Advertiser
Is that.
- [15:40]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
And very clearly it is. I want to bring something to you though. I'm going to step a little bit back on the Greenland thing and explain to you and maybe you tell me why I'm wrong. Because I'm kind of obsessed about this. I believe that Trump, by saying he wants to purchase Greenland, he has set up what is essentially an impossible ask. You notice he hasn't tendered an offer, right? For a guy who's like, you know, all we want to buy, we want to buy it. He hasn't made an offer. Like, isn't that typically what you do if you. If you want to buy a thing? You know, you go to the car dealership and you say, huh, I like that Toyota Camry. I'll give you X dollars for it. And then the other, you know, the. The salesman says, let me go back and talk to my manager. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There is no offer. And the reason there isn't an offer, Will, is because there can't be an offer. You can't price the asset. It is impossible to have a transaction where the asset can't be priced. And a gigantic land mass like Greenland that has 50,000 people living there, you can't price it. Somebody was like, well, $1 trillion. I heard this is a thing that a lot of Magas say we could pay them $1 trillion. Are you saying that the eternal control of this gigantic landmass is worth the same as, like, the next few years of Elon Musk's executive time at test? No, crazy. Like, clearly that. That can't be right. But the second part of it is, if you are the seller at that point, so if you are Denmark and the United States is trying to coerce you into selling, whatever you accept as your sale price has to be paid up front because you have no ability to collect in the future. So if. If America were to say, we will give you $1 trillion and we'll give you 50 billion now and then give you 10 billion a year for, you know, we'll put it on a payment plan. We'll use Clara, you know, we'll use the PayPal. You can't accept that if you're Denmark because you have no way to compel payment. And because America is now a rogue regime there, you would be fools to assume that they would continue to pay you. And so the entire idea of this being a purchase is a sham, and we know it's a sham because Trump hasn't tendered an offer.
- [18:07]
Will Saletan
Okay, interesting theory. Let me push back on a couple of things. First of all, Truman came up with an offer, and Denmark said no. So there was a price put on it. Whether you could do that today, I'm not clear. But there are multiple problems. And you've just named some of them. Who is the seller? Is it Denmark or is it Green Greenland?
- [18:25]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Right.
- [18:26]
Will Saletan
Because the Trump is acting half the time the Trump people act like we can just offer a certain amount of money to each person in Greenland to vote. They're vote buying. Basically what they accuse Democrats of doing here, the payment plan. This is an administration, the Trump administration, that a had previous agreements with Denmark about how we were going to operate in Greenland, B signed a bunch of trade deals, or at least frameworks for trade deals last year, which we're now telling the Europeans, you know what, we're going to throw on another 10, 25% because we feel like it. Who in their right mind would sell anything to us on a payment plan when, as you just pointed out, we have no credibility at all, we have.
- [19:04]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
No credit rating and they have no way to enforce because again, we're now living in a world where the only way to force anything is guns. So, you know, America has just said that all documentation and treaties are not worth anything and that force is the only backstop of everything. And so if you're Denmark, you can't go unless you're willing to go to war against America, like full blown thermonuclear war against America. To collect, you have to assume that anything that you any the last dollar you get is the dollar they hand you at the ceremony, right? So this is why, again, it simply can't be done.
- [19:41]
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- [20:41]
Will Saletan
And honestly, JVL even if we paid upfront, which is impossible for all the reasons you named, there's no reason why they should trust us not to come and take it back. I mean, that's essentially what Trump has done with every deal that he's made. So there can be no bargaining with the United States. It's why, you know, our Catherine Rampel just wrote a story for us in the Bulwark today about the Europeans are making trade deals with the South Americans. Everybody's making deals with other entities, whether they are individual countries, whether they're blocks of countries, and that's because those entities have a credit rating. They are good to their word. But we're not. We're not. No one can. All the deals made with us are temporary. So, first of all, they can't make a deal with us for Greenland. But also, we shouldn't expect anyone to count on us. I mean, I think Americans would be fools to believe that anything that Donald Trump signs is an agreement that would be honored in the future, certainly by our side, if not by theirs.
- [21:38]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
And so because of this, and so I'm just going to keep walking you down the road because a sale is not possible, and anybody who is looking at this objectively understands that it's not possible, then the demand for a sale is clearly only pretext for war. Right? If you are demanding a thing which is not possible and you are refusing to take military force off the table, and then you are saying that you're going to punish people for not taking the thing which isn't possible to be completed, there's no other way to understand that except as a pretext for war. Unless it's just like rantings of a crazy guy and there'll be a shiny object next week and he'll be off to that. Right? I mean, that is possible. But if you assume that everybody is being a rational actor here and that people are pursuing interests in ways that are rational, then he's going to go to war for Greenland.
- [22:36]
Will Saletan
So let me offer an alternative to that. And I think probably you don't. Probably you don't mean literally he's going to go to war for it. What he wants is Greenland. The war would be a means to it, Right? So my alternative picture of what's going to happen here and what Trump has in mind is Dely Rodriguez. Del Rodriguez turns Trump, goes into Venezuela, takes out Maduro, kills a bunch of Cuban guards, blows some things up and says, we'll do it to you next unless you do what we say. So we have this remote control operation going on. I think what Trump wants is a Delsey Rodriguez in Greenland. I think that he's using the threat of force as, and this is, this escalation in this tweet is part of it, in order to get somebody in Greenland to knuckle under to him. And remember, he sent J.D. vance there, what was it, in March of last year? He sent it early last year. Right. And then the Danes and the Greenlanders were pissed off because we had people, American operatives up there, that they sussed out. We are in there trying to find someone in Greenland who will be our viceroy. And I think this military threat is part of the game. Does that make sense?
- [23:48]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
It is, it does make some sense. There are a couple differences, right. So in Venezuela, you're not dealing with a democratic polity, you're just dealing with a gang. And so you can take out the guy at the top of the gang and then, you know, his, his deputy, you can make a deal with them because you don't have to worry about popular sentiment. It's different with Greenland and Denmark, right.
- [24:12]
Will Saletan
This is.
- [24:13]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
They, these people seem to have gotten their Irish up a little bit in the way the Canadians did, God bless them, when Trump was going on and on about conquering Canada. So it's harder, right? You can't just strike a one on one deal with this, the one person in the gang. And I'm not sure what Trump could do materially for Denmark or Greenland to make this make sense for them. Right. And so that's why I, you know, I could have seen this as a, well, at some point sign some agreement and say, well, Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel get to extract a bunch of rare earth minerals from Greenland and that's all we ever wanted at the beginning, getting art of the deal. Right? This is the, you know, I could see that, but we're getting to a place where I don't know that there's a climb down. I mean, Trump is now talking about how this is, you know, it's all part of the golden dome strategy and that this is vital for American national security. And France and the United Kingdom are playing a dangerous game. I, I don't know. Will, are you with me on the idea that NATO's dead?
- [25:25]
Will Saletan
Well, no, I don't think NATO's dead in the sense that we can elect a new president and American can, can, can come crawling back and saying, you know what? We, we want to restore the old order. We're very sorry. I mean, Germany, it took them a few decades to come back, but they came back to civilization. Right. They're back in the good graces of. Of the civilized world. So I don't think that NATO is over, but I do.
- [25:49]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Germany had to be occupied in order for that to happen, Will.
- [25:53]
Will Saletan
Right, right. And I don't want to compare what America has done so far to what Germany did. I don't want to go crazy here.
- [25:59]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Okay?
- [26:00]
Will Saletan
But I was speaking before about our credit rating. We have a financial credit rating, which is shot, but we also have a moral credit rating, and that's shot. So I don't think the Europeans are going to ever trust us the same way they trusted us before. We had one election of Donald Trump. They were willing to sort of give us, okay, you screwed up. You didn't really think this guy was going to win. He stages a coup. We bring him back. He threatens Europe. He engages in all sorts of economic coercion against Europe. He says, Europe doesn't matter. At a certain point, they're just going to say, this is what America wanted. America didn't turn this guy out. I mean, here we sit here today, Trump's making these statements. I hear from people in Europe. They say, you know, we don't see you guys rising up. If America was different from Trump, you'd be doing something about it. They don't see us doing anything about it. To that extent, even when Trump's gone, they may say, you're going to have another Trump because that's who you are.
- [26:57]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Well, I mean, so I think the problem isn't moral. I mean, obviously there's a moral component to it, but the problem is very practical. And when I say NATO is dead, what I mean is that it is a dead man walking. Right. It is a zombie organization now, as currently envisioned. Maybe it continues on and is just superseded by, like, a European defense pact.
- [27:16]
Rocket Money User
But.
- [27:16]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
But as the future of European defense does not include America, and they will continue to get whatever they can from America while they decouple from us. But the process of decoupling is coming, and I think it's unavoidable. And the reason is because they have now seen that America can't be counted on, forget can't be counted on to fulfill Article 5 obligations. America can't be counted on to. To not be belligerent.
- [27:46]
Will Saletan
Yes.
- [27:46]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Right. And so they have to make alternative arrangements. You cannot have an alliance with a country who Maybe once every four years or 16 years becomes a belligerent, an adversary. Right. That. That doesn't work. You have to treat them as A strategic competitor at, at best, or a strategic adversary. And again, this, this is going to begin with a nuclear umbrella. They will at some point. There's already been a lot of talk, if you follow, like, European defense stuff, about creating a European nuclear umbrella, beginning with the French and the British. Eventually this will mean the Germans getting nukes. The Poles will have to get nukes. And once there is a nuclear umbrella that is European independent. And this is, again, one of the reasons that the Ukraine war is so important is that Ukraine has built up a tremendous defense industry. And so the biggest part of this is, is actually building the homegrown defense industries because Europe has understood now that they can't rely on American weapons manufacturers. And so you've seen this in the last six months or so. A lot of European defense contracts are going internally now. And so they're. Instead of doing procurement through the Americans, they're looking to stand up their own industries. And that's because they understand they simply can't rely on us, even at the level of trade and military procurement. And as that's. I mean, that train, I think, can't be stopped. And it doesn't matter what happens going forward. America has proven that this is what America is.
- [29:23]
Will Saletan
Right.
- [29:24]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
We're a rogue state.
- [29:25]
Rakuten Advertiser
Will.
- [29:28]
Will Saletan
You'Ve followed this more than I have. I was going to say the Europeans need us for as long as we are the sole arms supplier capable of giving them what they need in Ukraine.
- [29:38]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
And that's why they won't jump off until they're ready to jump. Right. They'll string it along.
- [29:43]
Will Saletan
But that is the window that they have to finesse here in Greenland.
- [29:48]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
It's about a day.
- [29:49]
Will Saletan
They can't have a confrontation with us. That takes us out of supplying them the weapons to defend their eastern flank while they prepare for the eventual confrontation with the west, which is us.
- [30:01]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
The West.
- [30:01]
Will Saletan
Right.
- [30:01]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Yeah. And that's why I actually think that the most likely outcome is that Trump sort of tacos and claims victory and claims art of the deal. The next most likely outcome is he just announces that we do own Greenland. And it's like the Gulf of America, like, yes, it's ours now, you know, and we're going to take away the White House press credentials of any organization that doesn't refer to Greenland as American territory. You know, like we're. Yeah, we own it, you know, and everybody else can say they don't, but. But we do. The next most likely is that they just send a couple platoons over there and say, this is ours now. And if that happens, if there's an actual invasion, I think the Europeans just let it go because there is again, they're in the business of decoupling. And so they'll, okay, sure, fine. Keep getting access to as many American arms as they can while they stand up their own defense industry. Trust that if another Democratic president is ever elected, that Democratic president will hand Greenland back over, which I think is like an obvious thing that would happen, but it wouldn't change the directionality. It wouldn't change where, where Europe goes from here. Because you're. This is. I wrote, I wrote a piece about all this last week, Will, and I said something like the rest of the free world while I was writing. And then I realized I can't use that phrase anymore because the free world no longer includes America. America is now like China or like Russia, a great power looking to just exert domination wherever it can, to take whatever spoils it can in the free world is now like Europe and Canada and a bunch of Pacific nations, Australia, Japan, South Korea.
- [31:49]
Will Saletan
So I don't want to go with you to that, to that vision of the future. That's, that's farther than I'm willing to say. But I want to say this to anybody who thinks that your scenario of America just sending troops in to Greenland and not being opposed. Anyone who thinks that that is far fetched and I hate to be an alarmist. I'm going to just name two people who have specifically described that scenario. Stephen Miller and Mike Johnson. Both of them said there's not going to be a war in Greenland. There's not going to be a fight in Greenland because there's hardly anyone there. By various estimates, 55,000, 60,000 people. It's not a serious military. There won't be a war there because no one will fight us. They said. Not because we won't fight them, because they won't fight us.
- [32:32]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
I think that's, that is probably. I, I begun this whole adventure like a year ago thinking it was like a 2% scenario. By last, last week or the week before, on the next level, I was up to about 10 chance that we like actually invade Greenland. I think I'm now up to like 35%, maybe like a little bit better than one in three. How about you?
- [32:54]
Will Saletan
I'm not there because I don't see other people other than Donald Trump really pushing on this and because I actually believe there are enough Republicans in Congress who would actually do something about this. The question is, what can Congress do? Materially not controlling the military.
- [33:15]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Well, that's why I'm at 1 in 3 and not 2 and 3 will.
- [33:19]
Will Saletan
I'll take that from you JVL. I will take 1 in 3.
- [33:23]
JVL (Jonathan V. Last)
Guys, this stuff is important and it's important for people to be clear eyed about it and not either be alarmints or be Pollyanna. I think we try to do a pretty good job here at the bulwark of going right between those the skill and cryptis of alarmism and Pollyannaism. We'll be back as more things dictate that we have to be. Good luck America.