Markets TANK After Trump’s Dangerous Greenland Threats

What this episode is about

The discussion focuses on Donald Trump's controversial threats regarding Greenland, igniting geopolitical tension and concerns over potential conflict. Trump's cavalier remarks have prompted the Prime Minister of Greenland to advise citizens to prepare for an invasion, while his rhetoric has raised alarms about the implications for NATO and international relations.

Key takeaways

• Trump's Greenland obsession reveals a melting Arctic's geopolitical goldmine—trade routes and resources, or just a big ego?
• European leaders at Davos: when diplomacy feels like lecturing a toddler—stern faces and earnest words can't override chaos.
• One British soldier in Greenland triggers tariffs—who knew military exercises could spark international pouting and economic temper tantrums?
• Is international law now just a suggestion? Trump's antics have plunged us into a 'rules optional' world order.
• S&P drops 2% as Europe fumbles with ineffectual responses—serious business feels like a comedy skit with high stakes.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Ben Rhodes (Guest) · 9 min speaking
• Unknown Speaker (Host) · 6 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Jens Frederick Nielsen, World Economic Forum

Notable quotes from "Markets TANK After Trump’s Dangerous Greenland Threats"

• Constituents that they needed to start preparing for a possible invasion of Greenland. Prime Minister Jent Frederick Nielsen said, quote, It's not likely there will be a…

  about Jens Frederick Nielsen · at 0:21

• President Amino Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded to Trump during their speeches at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday.

  about World Economic Forum · at 2:32

• Yeah. And like and just the Europeans should understand that this is not popular. Like there's a CNN poll, 75% of US voters oppose the US state in Greenland. Quinnipiac at a…

  about CNN · at 8:41

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Jens Frederick Nielsen — Person · Referenced local leader (Greenland) · 1 mention · first at 0:20
  Introduced as Greenland’s prime minister warning constituents to prepare for a possible invasion, anchoring the episode’s Greenland security framing.

Companies & orgs

• CNN — Company · Referenced source · 2 mentions
  Cited as a source for polling data regarding US public opinion on Greenland.

Places & events

• World Economic Forum — Event · Setting · 1 mention · first at 2:36
  Mentioned as the venue for speeches by Macron and Carney regarding Trump's actions.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 All right, so we're getting dark already, Ben. Let's start with Greenland. Um, so when you guys hear this, Donald Trump will probably in be in Davos. He'll probably be screaming at a group of random European leaders because

0:12 we'll be debating an emergency YouTube. He really wants to like steal uh Greenland from Denmark. So on Tuesday, the prime minister of Greenland told his constituents that they needed to start preparing for a possible invasion of Greenland. Uh, Prime Minister Jent Frederick Nielsen said, quote, "It's not likely there will be a military conflict, but it can't be ruled out." A little ominous. Uh, Trump's commentary on the subject was a little less serious and sober. He posted an AI generated image of himself planting an American flag in the ground next to a sign that said Greenland, US territory established 2026. He posted a screenshot of a text from French President Emanuel Macron where Macron said, "I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland." I don't either. Uh he also posted a screenshot of a new sickopantic uh pathetic text from NATO Secretary General Mark Rut. Uh he later attacked

1:02 the UK over an unrelated issue. So um this past weekend, Ben, Trump sent a text to the Prime Minister of Norway that said the following quote, "Dear Jonas, considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight wars plus, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace. The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland. Thank you, President DJT. I excerpted I cut a bunch of even crazier because it was just too long. Um, so Ben, this Greenland obsession went from being something that I think a lot of people treated like a joke to genuine crisis that is threatening to destroy NATO and the global order. Uh, Trump himself said there's no going back at this point. Um, in past episodes, we've explained in more depth why Trump might want Greenland. the the quick and dirty is the melt arct the melting Arctic is opening up shipping routes. There's

1:50 mineral deposits, oil and gas. Then there's this big stupid ego and he wants to expand the size of the United States. But this most recent uh temper tantrum seems to have stemmed from a a misunderstanding. So basically a few European countries recently sent a tiny number of troops to Greenland for military exercises. Uh the Financial Times said it was one British soldier, two Finns, a few dozen Danish, German, and French troops. that's all we're talking about. Um, they thought that those countries thought this would be like a they would show Trump that they were taking his Arctic security concerns seriously. He interpreted it as defiance or an affront to him. So, he announced tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK until we get control of uh, Greenland. Uh, French President Amino Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded to Trump during their speeches at the World

2:38 Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. Here's a bit of what they said. Carney is first. Macron is second.

2:44 We knew the story of the international rulesbased order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced s asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful and American hijgemony in particular helped provide public goods. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture not a transition. It's as a shift towards a world without rules where international law is trampled underfoot.

3:33 Cooperation gives way to relentless competition. Competition from the United States of America through trade agreements that undermine our export interests, demand maximum concession concessions, and openly aim to weaken and subordinate Europe combined with an endless accumulation of new tariffs that are fundamentally unacceptable. Even more so when they are used as leverage against territorial sovereignty. This is all very serious for you not watching on YouTube's wearing sunglasses because he has like I think he got a big eye or something.

4:11 But it's not that it's not he's wearing sunglasses. It's the the blue. Why those sunglasses? Uh it's like if Joe Biden took mushrooms and bought a new pair of aviators that happened to be mirror blue.

4:26 It looks like his AI. We got to laugh at something. It's so funny at something.

4:32 Sorry everybody. So then the S&P is down 2% on Tuesday. So maybe the business world is taking this more seriously than we are right now. Um that said like the response from Europe is pretty feckless. It's like a you know stern speech from sunglasses. At least Carney's like pretty serious looking. Okay, we're going to try to get it together. But if you were at Davos Yes. and you were at a strategy session for a bunch of European leaders. Like what are we telling him to do at this point?

5:01 So look, first of all, I think part of what's happening here is the Greenland thing. It's it's serious. It's deadly serious. He keeps coming back to it. He clearly means it. It's not just a troll. Like he clearly wants to conquer Greenland. And we've been through those reasons. But the other thing is it also can't be separated from we're we're one year into the Trump administration. He just kidnapped the president of Venezuela. Whatever you think about that guy, right? he's just invaded Minneapolis. He's just tried to like arrest the head of the Federal Reserve.

5:31 Like this guy is out of control, right? And to so to pivot to the leaders here and the people at Davos.

5:38 Um you know, Carney gets up there and he says, uh well, you know, looks like the rules based order is ending or it's over. It is the music has stopped. It doesn't exist anymore. Trump's re-election was the end of that. like these these guys and they're almost all guys have been living through this year where they've basically mimicked all the tactics of all the capitulators and we've talked about this the law firms the universities like if we can just kiss his ass hard enough or flatter him hard enough or the British give him like a long grade or Mark Ruda calls him daddy giving us a spanking in like a text like they this

6:14 which actually happened by the way that's actually a thing that happened in the world right this doesn't work It's and in fact like any bully like the more you give him your lunch money um the more he's going to come back for something else. And by the way it's not the Nobel Peace Prize. If they gave him the Nobel Peace Prize like he'd demand the Eiffel Tower, you know, like it is if they don't stand up to him and I think they finally figured this out. If they don't stand up to him, he's going to take Greenland. like the status quo. We should all like just name this.

6:40 Absent something changing, he will try to take Greenland in some fashion which will shatter NATO and usher in this era of like imperial conquest and competition right?

6:49 And Greenland might not be might not be last. I mean, he also put an AI put out an AI image that had Canada marked with a US flag, you know,

6:57 and why not we have to take this stuff all seriously and literally to use an early Trumpism. And but look what so what could they do? They need they need to everybody needs by the way to just you now we have to push back. This guy is clearly out of control. He's clearly the worst version of himself. If I'm the Europeans, I'm sending actual troops to Greenland, right? Like show that there is a military commitment to defend this uh territory. I would be I would be anting up the tariffs, right? I would be threatening um to essentially invoke the coercion principle in the EU, right?

7:31 that this is the idea that if you are trying to coersse the EU territorially, which is exactly what he's trying to do, um that you're essentially going to rugpull them from European markets, right?

7:41 Yeah. Basically, that would that that could cut off the United States companies, including like service providers, tech companies, from the entire half a billion person European market. That is a it's often described as like a bazooka. It's like a massive tool that would send a message

7:55 and they don't have to necessarily use it. But if you start to threaten these things or you start to kind of pull from US investments, by the way, like there would be, you know, some economic costs like we saw today. I would much rather there be some market disruptions. Me too. Then the US through this appeasement strategy of the Europeans then invades and takes Greenland and breaks NATO. And if by the way people want to say like, oh, you know, are you siding with the Europeans? No. As an American, I don't want us to do that.

8:21 like I would like this president to be stopped. If the same thing with the Republicans in Congress who like to go on like Codell's to Denmark and reassure them, don't reassure them. Get to work drafting a resolution. You can't reassure them. You have no power.

8:33 You well try to assert power, right? Uh and Trump may try to annoy you, but everybody needs to be pushing back because he's made it clear that he's not going to stop.

8:41 Yeah. And like and just the Europeans should understand that this is not popular. Like there's a CNN poll, 75% of US voters oppose the US state in Greenland. Quinnipiac at a poll. 55% oppose us buying Greenland. 90% oppose the United States taking it by force. Also, the guy's lying, right? Like Trump keeps saying, "Oh, the the the Chinese are all over the Arctic." No. The former head of NATO said he hasn't seen a Chinese naval ship there in a decade. Like the Russians are there, sure, but destroying NATO is the greatest thing you could do to Putin. Like,

9:10 that's much better than, you know, anything else. His oligarchs are laughing. I'm with you on like the anti-corion tool. There needs to be some sort of massive economic cost. It could be tariffs. It could be the coercion tool and it's got to be now. And like I I actually Trump actually does respond to pain if the market 10% 20%

9:27 if it gets in the bond markets especially. If his donors started calling him like that's when they're like that's when he backs off. Um also Ben I just I would quickly want to point out Trump pretends not to care about the elites and the establishment. He's currently leading the largest ever delegation to Davos in presidential history. No one cares more about the elite opinion than he does. It actually wouldn't matter.

9:50 Well, yeah, we should. Bill Clinton went to Davos. George W. Bush never went to Davos. Barack Obama never went to Davos. Right. So, this guy runs against elites and he just can't wait to get to Davos. Obsessed with them. Every single one of his cabinet secretaries seems to be there. But

10:04 gave the New York Times a three-hour interview the other week, right? Like he's obsessed with these people.

10:08 But the core point is you're not going to charm him or persuade him, right? The charm is these sicopantic texts and praise. I mean the Mark Rut thing, we should just spend a minute on this cloud, right? Uh I mean NATO needs to toss that guy overboard. Not that they will, but I will defend your policies on Ukraine on television. He's saying like policies that run directly counter to what NATO wants or the rest of NATO wants. Um but but like you they've tried that. You need leverage like not persuasion, not charm. You need to show you've got skin in the game. I would say one of the reasons the European leaders don't do it, right, is that they feel politically weak. Like their approval ratings are in the I would say maybe one of the reasons why your approval ratings are in the is because you look weak, right? Toughen up.

10:55 Like toughen up. You might actually like get a little bump at home. The reason people are probably going to the AFD in Germany or the National Rally in France or Nigel Farage in the UK is because at least they look like quote unquote strong leaders, right? Kier Stmer shows some backbone, man. Like if you want to if you want to face down Nigel Farage, like show that you will do that by defending British interest and European sovereignty.

11:17 The the new Japanese uh prime minister, Takichi Sai, just called a snap election because her approval rating is at like 70% in part because she just picked a giant fight with the Chinese that she can't win militarily. Like you're right, like there is some value to strength. Just one last thing on this NATO point. Um Trump did this like absolutely insanely. It was like nearly 2 hours, 100 minutes or something like that press conference today. It was rambling. It was low energy. Um, and he was asked if he was committed to staying in NATO.

11:47 This is his answer as of Tuesday, January 20th. Mr. President, are you committed to keeping the US in NATO?

11:54 I've I've had a such a good relationship. I've made it so much better, so much stronger. It's so good now. NATO is so much stronger now. Uh, I don't agree with a lot of the things they've done, but that was done before I got there. Uh, I think NATO's been uh, good. Sometimes it's overrated, sometimes it's not, but we have a strong NATO. Uh, when I came here, we had a weak NATO. We had a NATO NATO at 2% and they weren't paying. We had a a nothing NATO. Uh, NATO's, whether you like it or not, it's only as good as we are. If NATO doesn't have us, NATO is not very strong. to your point at the top like about the music having stopped. He's speaking in the past tense.

12:35 Yeah. And he's fundamentally wrong, right? The strength of NATO isn't like a percentage. The strength of NATO is the collective defense commitment. And if one NATO member is threatening to invade and annex a territory or another, that goes out the window. I should say, and this will anticipate your transition to our next topic. I'm also I'm mad at everybody today because it's been such a crappy couple weeks. Mad at me? not you and not our wonderful team here. But I'm going to talk about the media here for a second

13:02 because you know he says these things, nobody is spending 5%. That is a fiction. They all promise to do it sometime in the future. They're not spending 5% of their GDP on defense. It's not something happening in the real world. He has not ended eight world wars. We've covered that. He's not ended any of them the last I checked. like the but he's allowed to believe this cartoon because he has his own state media but also because the actual media just repeats these fictions as if like this man has the emperor has no clothes and unless collectively foreign leaders congressional leaders in this country media citizens and by the way it's citizens who are doing in places in Minneapolis start to just call complete on this guy like he's going to drive this entire world off off a cliff.

13:50 Yep. Even on just on this NATO 5% spending thing, even if you believe for a second that they are all really going to spend 5%. It is what the way it breaks down is it's like 3 and a half% on kind of like core defense spending like guns and and then 1.5% on this nebulous category of like cyber security or critical infrastructure or civil preparedness. Like it's a fake thing. It's a fake thing, but he just repeats it over and over again. It drives me crazy. Um, okay. That felt good. I I'm sorry for laughing so hard at the macro.

14:22 Well, you need a little levity. I just It's a reason, by the subscribe to us on YouTube, though, because if you saw the glasses, I think you'd be laughing with us.

14:29 It was one of those things where like I cracked once and then I made the mistake of looking at you and then you looked and then we just couldn't make eye contact and just we had to get it over with. Okay, thank you for watching that excerpt of POD Save the World, the show I do every week with Ben Rhodess where we talk about the biggest issues in national security and foreign policy. Please subscribe to Pods Save the World here on YouTube. If you want to watch the rest, go over to the Pods Save the World YouTube page, but also subscribe to Pods Save America on YouTube. We are trying to build a progressive media empire, and as you noticed, uh, YouTube is full of right-wing crap. And when you subscribe to Pods Save America, you help us get good information to people and get good information into the YouTube algorithm. I don't know. So, the people just learn stuff that's accurate. That's that's all we're asking for. So,

15:08 subscribe. It's free. Thank you.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Markets TANK After Trump’s Dangerous Greenland Threats"?

Ben Rhodes (Guest), Unknown Speaker (Host).

What is "Markets TANK After Trump’s Dangerous Greenland Threats" about?

The discussion focuses on Donald Trump's controversial threats regarding Greenland, igniting geopolitical tension and concerns over potential conflict. Trump's cavalier remarks have prompted the Prime Minister of Greenland to advise citizens to prepare for an invasion, while his rhetoric has raised alarms about the implications for NATO and international relations.

What is mentioned in this Pod Save America episode?

3 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Jens Frederick Nielsen, World Economic Forum, CNN. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Markets TANK After Trump’s Dangerous Greenland Threats"?

The episode runs 16 min; the transcript is about 3,036 words in 38 timestamped sections.

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