We’re Not Invading Greenland After All. Sigh. The Democrats Non-profit Network. Financial Heavy Weights on Fed Firing Case. Star Is Born: Bessent Kills It at Davos. More
A beaming President Trump sporting a Viking helmet with the words “Dane Deal!” graces the cover of today’s New York Post. World War III averted!
President Trump says he has reached a “framework” for a Greenland deal and therefore called off threatened punitive tariffs. A Washington Post editorial proposes that the president “took an off-ramp” and thus “defuses a crisis he created.” The Examiner’s Byron York said on Fox that the president’s Greenland maneuver was “classic Trump.”
“This was kind of classic Trump, wasn’t it? Trump wants something, and then he asks for 10 times that. The other side flips out, and they go back and forth and go back and forth. It becomes a huge news story,” York told host Bret Baier.
York said that the endgame was predictable, with the other side eventually offering a deal close to what Trump sought at the outset.
“Top NATO Official Reveals Details of Stunning Meeting with Trump that Produced Greenland Deal ‘Framework’” is a Fox Digital headline. Having watched the interview, Ms. Must can say that the last thing Bret Baier’s interview with NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte had was details:
After President Donald Trump announced a new Greenland “framework” had been agreed upon with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the NATO chief told Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier” the U.S. forcibly taking control of Greenland from Denmark was not discussed during meetings between him and Trump in Switzerland during the World Economic Forum.
“That issue did not come up anymore in my conversations with Mr. President. He’s very much focused on what we need to do to make sure that that huge Arctic region, where change is taking place at the moment, where the Chinese and Russians are more and more active, how we can protect that,” Rutte said when pressed on the details of the reported “framework” that has been agreed upon.
Spiked Online’s Frank Furedi asks if President Trump is “King of the World Economic Forum”:
When he finally delivered his delayed speech, Trump addressed his audience as what they were – namely, reluctant supplicants too weak to thwart his geopolitical ambitions. After boasting about his alleged role in America’s economic growth, he took several well-aimed swipes at Europe. He claimed that ‘certain places in Europe were not even recognisable’ and that Europe’s leaders had destroyed their own nations. He was particularly cutting about the Europeans’ obsession with green energy, accusing them of wasting money on buying windmills from China, while the Chinese Communist Party laughs all the way to the bank. …
Europe’s holiday from history has come to an abrupt and painful end.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal says that Trump “backtracked on using force on Greenland but still embarrassed Europe.” Columnist Walter Russell Mead compares the current “fraught” state of Trans-Atlantic relations to the Suez crisis but notes that the alliance survives. James of the same esteemed publication says, “Get Ready for Greenland Summer!” and predicts that non-stops to Nuuk may be more popular than ever. This Just In: Trump says he got everything he wanted.
Greenland wasn’t the president’s only concern at Davos (via the New York Post):
President Trump unveiled his international Board of Peace during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Thursday, expanding on his vision for a global body to rival the United Nations and claiming that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip was all but over.
Not unexpectedly, the New York Times was displeased (“latest example of the president dismantling the post-World War II international system and building a new one, with himself at the center.”). New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin’s take is different:
For UN critics, it’s hard to believe that there really are people who are concerned that the UN could be hurt.
Oh, please, bring it on!
Vice President J.D. Vance will be in Minnesota today, where The Great Unhinged will bring it on for him. A lefty publication called The Minnesota Reformer says, “Welcome, Vice President Vance. Please take your federal stormtroopers with you when you go.”
The “stormtroopers,” of course, are the men and women of ICE, federal agents who are trying to make Minnesota safer. Fox Digital has a stunning report on far-left agitator Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of the architects of Sunday’s invasion of a church, who raked in over $1 million during six years leading a Minneapolis civil rights nonprofit that addresses anti-poverty issues. In connection with this, you might want to look at Barton Swaim’s “Democrats’ Nonprofit Problem”:
The unfolding debacle in Minneapolis captures an underappreciated fact about the Democratic Party: It is configured to react in unreasoning rage to everything President Trump does. The challenge of “messaging”—how to condemn roundups of illegal migrants without defending protesters’ lawlessness—is only a symptom of the problem. The problem itself arises from the Byzantine network of activist nonprofits created and fostered over the past decade and a half by liberal foundations and progressive billionaires.
Bold Solution: Writing in The American Conservative, Ann Coulter offers a remedy: “Relive The Civil Rights Era. Send in The Troops.” Free Speech crusader Greg Lukianoff also proposes at The Free Press that Minnesota is posing a threat to free speech.
President Trump is having a dandy (or Dane-dy) time at Davos, but back in Washington, the Supreme Court looked like it was not leaning his way in his quest to fire Federal Reserve Board Lisa Cook. Meanwhile, a rare filing in the Lisa Cook–Trump case could sway Supreme Court Justices, Fox Digital reports:
It was signed by every living former chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, as well as six former Treasury secretaries who served presidents of both parties.
The group, which also includes seven former White House economic advisers, spans roughly five decades of U.S. economic policymaking.
In the 32-page amicus brief, the group argues that allowing the Trump administration to remove a sitting Fed board member would “erode public confidence in the Fed’s independence and threaten the long-term stability of the economy.”
“The House is playing politics, but a subpoena is a subpoena,” an editorial in the WSJ argues in the case of former President Bill and not former President Hillary Clinton’s summons to testify about the Epstein mess. The odd thing is that Dems broke ranks and voted with Republicans. Axios has a remarkable tally.
Loyal daughter of a certain state that I am, I can’t resist touting Rahm Emanuel’s “The ‘Mississippi Marathon’ Is Teaching Kids to Read.” Mississippi skyrocketed from 49th to ninth in the nation, and it did it by focusing on basics:
Mississippi didn’t sprinkle fairy dust on its schools to improve them. It abandoned the hokum that convinced educators that they could teach kids to read through pictures and context clues rather than decoding words. The state restored phonics-based systems that rigorous scientific studies have shown to work. But more than that, with the help and support of former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale, the Magnolia State constructed a system to train teachers so that they are effective at teaching students to read.
It also imposed systems of accountability to ensure that administrators, teachers and students alike meet their marks. As Mr. Barksdale said to me, “Mississippi miracle” is a misnomer because it suggests that test scores improved overnight. What happened would better be understood as the “Mississippi marathon.”
Emanuel goes on to say that the Mississippi miracle is uncomfortable to conservatives because they have abandoned public education. This just isn’t true. The Right simply wants to give families alternatives to failing public schools. If more public schools followed the Mississippi example, they wouldn’t have to worry about competition from charter schools.
Must Be Noted: “Vance Will Have to Choose Between Tucker and the Presidency” is the self-explanatory headline over a National Review story. … A Star Is Born: Did Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent knock ‘em dead at Davos or what? You might enjoy “Bessent Eviscerates Newsom in Savage Davos Take-Down – ‘Patrick Bateman Meets Sparkle Beach Ken’.”
