Make Davos Interesting Again! Greenland Livens Things Up. Abigail Spanberger’s Glorious 48 Hours. Both God & Larry Kudlow Proud of President. More
European leaders cheered wildly as President Trump, forced to return briefly to Joint Base Andrews, boarded a new plane and resumed his flight to Davos.
Well, maybe not exactly. The consuming topic at Davos is President Trump’s relentless quest for Greenland, which has our European allies in a tizzy.
The president said there would be a solution that would “make Denmark so very happy” before leaving Washington. Now on the ground in Switzerland, the president says he “won’t use force” to acquire Greenland. Trump’s speech at Davos, delivered this morning Washington time, appears to have been pure Trump:
In an address that lasted for more than an hour in Davos, Switzerland, he said the reason the U.S. needs to take control of Greenland is purely for security and has nothing to do with access to minerals, calling Denmark “ungrateful” for U.S. action in World War II.
Stocks opened higher during Trump’s speech, and the Dow was up roughly 1% in mid-morning trading.
The president quickly focused on Europe as he opened his address, saying the region isn’t heading in the right direction and criticizing the region’s approach to energy and immigration.
The speech, which was followed by a chat with World Economic Forum CEO Børge Brende, came on the back of raised tensions between the U.S. and Europe over the president’s designs on Greenland, with terse exchanges between officials at the Swiss gathering.
“Trump’s Greenland Strategy Draws from a Familiar Playbook,” according to the Wall Street Journal:
European leaders have for months responded to President Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland with a simple refrain: it isn’t for sale.
Now, those same leaders are rushing to set up meetings with Trump about the future of the territory after the U.S. president threatened to bludgeon Europe’s economy with stiff tariffs.
The shift is the result of a familiar playbook for Trump: make audacious demands, threaten economic or military consequences if those demands aren’t met—then wait for his opponents to bend.
On Tuesday, the president declined to take aggressive measures off the table. Asked by a reporter how far he is willing to go to acquire Greenland, Trump replied: “You’ll find out.” But he also at times struck a more conciliatory tone. “I think that we will work something out where NATO is going to be very happy, and where we’re going to be very happy,” the president said at the White House.
If Trump carries through on tariffs designed to obtain Greenland, Denmark could bludgeon back. CBS News reports that a Danish pension fund is planning to sell $100 million in U.S. Treasuries.
Why does Trump have a bee in his MAGA hat about Greenland? Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins proffers as a reason: “Greenland Is Trump’s White Whale.” Spiked-Online’s James Woudhuysen offers another reason that Greenland is the president’s must-have list:
So what is America’s desire for one of the world’s largest islands really all about? The answer is that, although Greenland’s raw materials are important, the US is principally concerned about keeping Russia, China and Europe out of the Arctic.
The US administration’s National Security Strategy provides a useful insight here. Published in December, it talks of restoring ‘American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere’, and protecting ‘our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region’. It then immediately follows this statement with: ‘We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere’ (my emphasis). As Frank Furedi has pointed out, the original doctrine of US President James Monroe from 1823, invoked once again by Trump, was to keep Europe out of Latin America. In today’s much more globalised world economy, it’s not just Europe, but also Russia and China that America wants out of its so-called sphere of influence. Taking control of the Arctic plays a major role in this strategy. …
This leads us to the US’s other geopolitical motivation – dealing with the Old World powers of Europe. As Brendan O’Neill has pointed out, Trump has used Greenland to let the world know that ‘after decades of living like welfare queens off of America’s military largesse’, Europe and Britain are impotent. Washington is furious with European leaders, as demonstrated by its anger towards its European NATO allies over their unwillingness to pay for their own defence.
Admitting that President Trump’s ordering an invasion of Greenland is remote, Tom Rogan writes in the Wall Street Journal that such a move would destroy the Trump presidency. Washington Post columnist Marc Theissen suggests a lease agreement modeled on Guantánamo Bay would be a win-win-win for the U.S., Greenland, and Denmark.
Is there a win-win way to solve the Minnesota Mess?
Christian leaders are warning of the “chilling effect” on the anti-ICE mob’s storming a Sunday worship service at a Minnesota church. The Department of Justice has subpoenaed Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for obstructing an immigration enforcement investigation. Townhall’s Joseph Chalfant charges that Walz and Frey have reportedly refused to cooperate with immigration officials and released nearly 500 criminal illegal aliens back into the community. Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York explores the weird notion that Minnesota considers itself exempt from federal law.
Leave it to several intrepid female journalists outside the legacy’s orbit look behind the accepted Renee Good narrative. Ann Coulter took a look at the evidence at the site of the tragic shooting, while PJ Media’s Victoria Taft says the image of an uxorious lesbian couple may be exaggerated, as apparently Renee and Rebecca Good were never married. He Went There.
Virginia’s new Governor Abigail Spangberger is enjoying “a 48-hour honeymoon,” according to the Free Beacon:
Abigail Spanberger had a solid two-day run. Between her swearing in on Saturday and Monday morning, the self-styled Democratic moderate was widely hailed as Virginia’s first female governor. A member of the “Mod Squad,” supposedly an antidote to the left-wing lunatics who helped doom Democrats to electoral defeat in 2024.
Governor Spangberger is an exemplar of the great Dem subterfuge, however: Campaign Centrist. Govern Left. Very Left. Here are some taxes Spangberg has raised. She has also moved to soften law enforcement penalties and end Virginia’s cooperation with ICE. Minnesota, here we come?
President Trump took a victory lap yesterday, the anniversary of his second inauguration. The two-hour event was meandering—the president segued from photographs of criminal illegals in Minnesota to …well, everything. Trump declared that “God is proud” of his achievements. Economics guru Larry Kudlow was also proud. “Trump goes too far, but he’s delivering a prosperous America,” argues USA TODAY’s Tom Swarens.
A terribly sad story about a boy who was raised as a girl in the U.K. Telegraph caught my eye. “After a secret gender reassignment as a baby, Jim Ambrose has spent his adult life undoing the damage,” the subhead notes:
The Secret of Me (Channel 4) begins with the story of Kristi Ambrose, who no longer exists. Kristi grew up as a tomboyish little girl in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with a love for playing football and a feeling that her parents were keeping something from her. It took until the age of 19, and a chance reading of a textbook, for Kristi to discover the truth. That truth is laid out in this startling documentary, which burns with a sense of injustice.
At birth in 1976, Kristi had been born with XY – male – chromosomes but classed as “intersex”, meaning that the genitalia had not developed in the normal way and looked neither male nor female. Doctors decided to perform “corrective” surgery, remaking the tiny phallus into a clitoris and removing the testes. From now on, they told the Ambroses, this child was a girl.
Jim recalls his childhood and what came after. When Ambrose was 12, his mother told him he would need to start taking pills in order to grow breasts. Approaching 18, Ambrose was sent for surgery to create an artificial vagina, a painful procedure which is recounted in wincing detail.
This reminds me of another book, “As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl,” by John Colapinto. Colapinto, Ms. Must is proud to say, was one of the esteemed panelists at an Independent Women event in 2000 when the issue of child mutilation was just entering public consciousness. We were prescient.
But Are They Still Awful? “Who Are the AWFULs? Trump Hates Them, So They’re Doing Something Right” is the headline on a story by Molly Jong-Fast in the lefty The New Republic. AWFULs are Affluent White Female Urban Liberals.
Speaking of whom, a headline nod to Stephen Kruiser for this headline: “Michelle Obama Exists to Make Hillary Clinton Seem Delightful.” New Lightbringer? Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has a new and juicy autobiography out. Title: “Where We Keep the Light: Stories from a Life of Service.” A conservative Lightbringer: Larry O’Connor of WMAL is now also editor-in-chief of Townhall.
