How Far Will Trump Go to Get Greenland? ‘You’ll Find Out’ – The Wednesday AM Quickie 1/21/26
That’s it from me, Corey’s back tomorrow. See you next week! - Whitney
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THE BIG NEWS
How Far Will Trump Go to Get Greenland? ‘You’ll Find Out’
Donald Trump continued to humiliate the United States ahead of his trip to Davos, Switzerland, which was delayed by three hours due to a “minor electrical issue” that prompted Air Force One to fly back to the Joint Base Andrews late Tuesday with Trump on board. Trump switched planes, said press secretary Karoline Leavitt; he’s expected to touch down today, though it’s unclear if he’ll arrive in time for his speech, scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Eastern, 2:30 p.m. local time in Davos.
In the hours ahead of his flight, Trump responded to “diplomatic overtures” from America’s oldest allies yesterday by mocking them online and threatening new levies and land grabs, HuffPost and the NYT reported. Per the NYT:
Mr. Trump warned that he would impose a new round of tariffs against European nations unless they acquiesced to his demands that the United States take over Greenland. He invited President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom European leaders have sought to isolate to counter his invasion of Ukraine, to join his new “board of peace” to reconstruct Gaza. He shared a post on social media that claimed China and Russia were simply “boogeymen” and that the United Nations and NATO were “the real threat.”
The president even posted the private text messages of European leaders trying to strike conciliatory notes, and shared a computer-generated image of himself planting a flag on Greenland. “GREENLAND, US TERRITORY, EST. 2026,” read a wooden placard in the image.
At a briefing, reporters asked Trump about his ongoing campaign to control Greenland and he appeared to confuse that island with a different one, saying, “Iceland, without tariffs, they wouldn’t even be talking to us about it.” A reporter asked how far Trump would go to get Greenland; Trump responded, “You’ll find out.”
Trump’s aggression caused global markets to nosedive as investors around the world dumped US stocks and bonds, NBC News reported. Among the assets investors were getting rid of were US Treasuries, such the Danish pension fund that Reuters said unloaded $100 million worth of them. More countries could do the same; Europe owns $8 trillion of US stocks and bonds, for example, “almost twice as much as the rest of the world combined,” a Deutsche Bank researcher told clients over the weekend. “In an environment where the geoeconomic stability of the western alliance is being disrupted existentially, it is not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part.”
Their willingness may be over. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney drew a standing ovation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland yesterday for obliquely referring to Trump without naming him, according to the Financial Times. The rules-based international order is suffering a “rupture, not a transition,” Carney said, so “middle powers” like Canada and its peers should unite. After all, he added, “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” Carney “pointed to the ‘fiction’ of a global order with ‘American hegemony’ at its center, but said an era of multilateralism was ending as groups such as the World Trade Organization and UN became ‘greatly diminished.’”
MORE STORIES TO WATCH
Putin Terrorizes Kyiv as World Watches Trump Unravel
Russia flayed Ukraine with another attack to knock out power during one of the coldest winters in years, the Associated Press reported, dropping 300 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles. The barrage cut heat to more than 5,600 apartment buildings and comes after the Jan. 9 assault that darkened the capital for days. Such attacks are outrageous, said UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk, including because they harm children, elders, and people with disabilities in particular. The strikes “can only be described as cruel,” Türk said. “They must stop. Targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure is a clear breach of the rules of warfare.” A Ukrainian negotiating team arrived in the US on Saturday with a goal “to convey how the relentless Russian strikes are undermining diplomacy.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he was trying “to finalize with US officials documents for a proposed peace settlement that relate to postwar security guarantees and economic recovery. If American officials approve the proposals, the US and Ukraine could sign the documents” at Davos, he said.
DOJ Subpoenas Minnesota Democrats
Trump’s Justice Department is expanding its original investigation into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to include at least three other officials, NBC News and the NYT reported. Federal prosecutors issued subpoenas yesterday to Walz and Frey, along with St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, state Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. Ellison and Moriarty are considering opening their own investigation into Jonathan Ross, the federal agent who executed Renee Good in Minneapolis. The subpoenas cited no specific criminal statute, the Times reported, but the investigation “as a whole was said to center on whether elected officials in Minnesota had conspired to impede the thousands of federal agents who have been in the state since last month” disappearing immigrants and citizens alike.
QUICKEST QUICKIES
- Latest Congressional Funding Bill Fails to Curb Homeland Security The 1,059-page bipartisan measure “leaves in place an additional $18 billion a year for ICE, tripling the budget. It is a surrender to Trump’s lawlessness. I will be a strong no and help lead the opposition to it,” Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said yesterday. via NBC News.
- DOGE Punks Likely Misused Sensitive Social Security Admin Data A new court filing says that two members of the fake agency were secretly communicating with a political group that wanted to overturn the election results, and that one signed an agreement with the group to help them. via HuffPost and Politico.
- World in 'Global Water Bankruptcy,' UN Warns Seventy-five percent of people live “in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water-insecure,” the group’s report found, while 2 billion people live “on ground that is sinking as groundwater aquifers collapse.” via The Guardian.
- Democratic NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill Freezes Electricity Rates on First Day in Office The former Navy helicopter pilot used her swearing-in ceremony to issue a pair of executive orders declaring a state of emergency on utility costs; she also slammed Trump, said he was “illegally usurping power,” and promised that while “these are some weary years,” she’ll “be damned if in this state, at this time, we cry any silent tears.” via Heatmap and NJ.com.
SOME NUMBER
37
That’s how many “high impact criminals” Mexico sent to the US yesterday to appease Trump’s demand that the country halt drug smugglers. Mexican Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch said the people transferred “represented a real threat to the country’s security.” According to the AP, the group includes “important figures from the Sinaloa Cartel, the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, a remnant of the infamous Zetas based in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, across from Texas. Mexican authorities said that all had pending US cases.” It’s Mexico’s third prisoner transfer to the US in less than a year; the country has transferred 92 people total.
ON THE SHOW TODAY
1/21: Sam and Emma are in the studio today and their guests are Adam Federman, reporting fellow with Type Investigations and author of Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray, and Rep. Aisha Gomez, representing district 62A in the Minnesota House of Representatives.
DON'T MISS MR CLIPS
ICE Blinds Man After Shooting Him Point Blank In The Face
Federal agents shot Kaden Rummler in the face with a “less-lethal” pepperball bullet, leaving him blind in his left eye. Agents later shot a second person in the face at close range, Britain Rodriguez.
Trump Mouthpiece FREAKS OUT Over Reporter's Question
I wonder what that lady’s blood pressure is. 200/80?
PARTING WORDS
“In previous times, it would be unheard of to lose your elimination status, unless it was a war-torn, collapsing country.”
– Amira Albert Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University, discussing the ongoing spread of measles throughout the nation. Measles was eliminated in the US as of 2000, a designation indicating the virus no longer circulates constantly. Not anymore. “We have all the ingredients to have our elimination status revoked,” Roess said.
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