President Donald Trump was in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday to speak at the World Economic Forum and, in typical Trump fashion, his barnburner of a speech made a host of headlines.
Perhaps the biggest news came when the president explicitly said for the first time that the United States “won’t use force” to take over Greenland – but he did not back down from his assertion that the U.S. must own the strategically located Danish territory.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Tom Bevan, Carl Cannon, and Andrew Walworth of RealClearPolitics to discuss Trump’s remarks and what comes next in his pursuit.
Trump’s Take
In an address that lasted more than an hour, President Trump laid out his vision for Greenland and explained what he sees as its strategic importance. He said the U.S. needs to take control for security purposes and only outright ownership will do.
“All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland, and all we’re asking for is to get Greenland, including right, title, and ownership, because you need the ownership to defend it,” he said. “You can’t defend it on a lease. Number one, legally, it’s not defensible that way totally. And number two, psychologically, who the hell wants to defend a license agreement?”
But it was his comments about how he plans to acquire the territory that made the most news. “We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable, but I won’t do that,” Trump said. “That’s probably the biggest statement I made, because people thought I would use force, but I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force.”
Because Denmark is part of NATO, Trump’s comments about not taking Greenland by force were significant. Even so, the president asserted the U.S. is the only country in the alliance that is capable of properly securing the territory.
“I have tremendous respect for both the people of Greenland and the people of Denmark, tremendous respect,” he said. “But every NATO ally has an obligation to be able to defend their own territory. And the fact is, no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States.”
He also made clear that the interest in Greenland is purely strategic. “Everyone talks about the minerals… To get to this rare earth, you have to go through hundreds of feet of ice. That’s not the reason we need it,” Trump explained. “We need it for strategic national security and international security, and that’s the reason I’m seeking immediate negotiations to, once again, discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States.”
The Strategic Rationale
Greenland, the world’s largest island situated between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, is a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. The U.S. currently operates Pituffik Space Base on the northwest coast. Almost 80 percent of Greenland is covered by ice, but increased melting has changed its accessibility.
“The real explanation around this has been, if you look at Greenland on a map, you will see that, thanks to global warming, we’ve had the entire sort of ice sheet around it melt away, and it is far more accessible by people like Russia and China than it ever was before,” Megyn explained.
“If you pursue Trump’s reasoning on the Monroe Doctrine… that we are responsible for what happens in our hemisphere… [Greenland] has been exposed in a way it wasn’t 30 years ago and… we have take responsibility for it,” she added.
Perhaps that perceived responsibility becomes even greater, in Trump’s view, when you consider what he had to say about the state of Europe today. “Places in Europe are not even recognizable, frankly, anymore. And I love Europe, and I want to see Europe go good, but it’s not heading in the right direction,” Trump said in Davos. “In recent decades, it became conventional wisdom in Washington and European capitals that the only way to grow a modern Western economy was through ever increasing government spending, unchecked mass migration, and endless foreign imports.”
“The consensus was that so-called dirty jobs and heavy industries should be sent elsewhere; that affordable energy should be replaced by the ‘Green New Scam’; and that countries could be propped up by importing new and entirely different populations from far away lands,” he added. “[It] very foolishly followed turning their backs on everything that makes nations rich and powerful and strong.”
Playing Politics?
In Bevan’s view, Trump did “sort of” explain his rationale for acquiring Greenland. He said that while people are free to agree or disagree with the reasoning, he thinks Trump sees it “as a matter of national security interest for the United States moving forward.”
Cannon wasn’t convinced. “I don’t think it has anything to do with national security, and I don’t even think it is because of all the minerals,” he said. “I think Donald Trump wants a feather in his cap. He wants it like Seward’s Folly when we got Alaska for $7 million.”
Walworth was in a similar camp because he believes everything Trump wants to do with the territory can be done without acquisition. “The idea that somehow legally we would not defend it. Well, we defend U.S. bases all over the world that are in all different countries,” he noted. “And we do have this thing called Article 5 with NATO, which says we are going to defend France, and Germany, and the other NATO countries. So, I’m not sure he is on firm ground legally when he says we need it in order to defend it.”
To that point about NATO, Megyn believes Trump is right to have reservations about the state of our European allies. “There is a real question about whether Europe is what it used to be and how closely tied we ought to be to Europe,” she said. “Every day, they are the ones making themselves less like what we first aligned with, with the influx of migrants and the changing on civil liberties and free speech. And I think Donald Trump is looking at them saying, amidst all this, ‘You want us to pay for your defense, which is effectively what we do through NATO? Those days are over. And if they’re not over, we want something for it.’”
“We all know that we are the ones responsible for defense. If Germany gets attacked, if France gets attacked, it’s the United States that will swoop in to save them,” Megyn added. “And now we have a president who is saying, ‘We’ll do it, but we actually do want something in return.’ And what we want right now is a territory called Greenland.”
The Betting Odds
With all of that in mind, Megyn asked the guys for where they put the odds of the U.S. gaining control of Greenland. Bevan put the likelihood at 20 percent, while Walworth gave it a 33.3 percent shot.
Cannon had a completely different take. “I think it is going to blow up on our face, and Greenland is going to end up as an independent country with a government that resembles [Zohran] Mamdani’s cabinet in New York City,” he predicted.
Megyn was much more bullish on Trump’s chances. “I say 80 percent chance,” she said. “We’re not taking it over by military force, but Trump is going to scare them to the point where they give it to us because it is just easier… We’re footing all their bills, [and] they want the free dinners, and they want the free movie tickets, and they want the popcorn.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with RealClearPolitics by tuning in to episode 1,235 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.