How are we supposed to take Donald Trump’s words? “Seriously, not literally?” “Symbolically?” As an endless stream of bullshit and distraction? Or as concepts of plans, trial balloons, and trolling? Parsing what the soon-to-be-president is actually talking about is troublesome enough. But it gets even messier when, say, he starts suggesting, in that off-handed-but-not-exactly-improvised way of his, that he may be open to taking the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland by force.
In a press conference Monday, Trump—who ran as a foreign policy dove on the promise of not starting any wars—raised the prospect of using the United States military to annex the arctic island, as well as the Panama Canal. “You might have to do something,” he said, the same day his son, Donald Trump Jr., arrived in Greenland on Tuesday with a message for its people: “We’re going to treat you well.” The president-elect, posting later, said that “this is a deal that must happen”: “MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN.”
Trump, who fashioned himself something of an America First isolationist in his first term and his successful 2024 campaign, hasn’t only set his sights on Greenland and the Panama Canal; he has also repeatedly joked about making Canada the 51st American state and demoting outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to “governor.”
Some of this is surely bluster—the kind of shell game Trump played in his first term to divert the public attention from what he was really up to. “He talks about invading Greenland and Panama to distract you and the media from the THEFT that’s about to happen right under your eyes—the giant tax cut for his billionaire and corporate friends, paid for by massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid,” as Democratic Senator Chris Murphy put it. And, as my colleague Molly Jong-Fast recently noted, it’s important that we not get so wrapped up in the crazy things Trump is saying that we lose sight of what he’s actually doing.
But Trump’s international bullying—and his top adviser Elon Musk seeking to use his growing political influence in Britain, Germany, and beyond—also shouldn't be brushed off. Sure, the notion of acquiring Greenland—which he proposed buying in his first term—sounds ridiculous. But then again, these are unprecedented times. Is the idea of a freshly emboldened demagogue with imperial designs really that outside the bounds of possibility?
Trump is an inveterate shit-talker. He may puff his chest out in an effort to get countries to bend to his demands on trade and other policies. But he almost assuredly will not invade Canada.
The thing with Trump, though, is this: He almost never does exactly what he says he’ll do, because it is impossible or impractical, or because it butts up against the ambitions of someone else in his orbit, or because he didn’t completely mean it in the first place. But he also doesn’t make completely empty promises: When he wants to do something, he quite often at least attempts it, and too frequently manages to get some version of it in motion. He never fully realized the grand border plans he pledged in his first term, for instance—but the inhumanity of the policies he was able to put into effect was exacerbated by their improvised execution.
Enacting immigration policy is, of course, different from seizing Greenland. But shit-talk takes on a kind of real-world momentum when it comes from of a man who will soon occupy the highest office in America. Democratic Senator John Fetterman, speaking on Fox News, seemed open to the idea, saying that he would not support taking Greenland by force, but that annexing the territory was a “responsible conversation” to have: “If anyone thinks that’s bonkers, it’s like, well, remember the Louisiana Purchase?”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede have both said that the territory is not for sale, though, and don’t seem to regard Trump’s threats of using force—be it military or economic—as idle: “The things that have come out, I think, are some serious statements,” Egede said Tuesday.
Those statements may be part of a Nixonian “madman” approach to foreign policy, which prizes unpredictably as an asset. But when the man in question is Trump—who lives in a right-wing echo-chamber where trolling is indistinguishable from sincere endorsement—it is especially hard to see where the strategy ends and the madness begins.
English (US) ·