WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s erratic behavior on the world stage — threatening to seize Greenland from Denmark, making rambling speeches and attacking key NATO allies at Davos — was just business as usual, a prominent moderate Republican insisted.
“Eleven years of this, have people not figured it out?” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told Raw Story at the Capitol.
The U.S. will benefit “if the end result is that he gets greater access, increased military presence” in Greenland, Lawler said, bemoaning the media’s “pandemonium” coverage of a head-spinning week.
President Trump first told Norway’s prime minister he wanted to buy or seize Greenland, in part because the Nobel Committee passed him over for the Peace Prize he so covets, even though the committee is completely independent from the Scandinavian country’s government.
Then, at the 56th World Economic Forum in Switzerland, President Trump saw Canadian PM Mark Carney win rave reviews for a pointed speech about the need for mid-sized countries to work together and not rely on America in the wake of the tariff-fueled trade wars Trump’s waged across the globe.
In stark contrast to the clarity offered by the leader of America’s northern neighbor, Trump’s own remarks in Davos saw him continually confuse Greenland with Iceland; promise not to use force to seize the former but insist he wants to take it regardless; say he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had worked out the “framework of a future deal” for increased U.S. access to Greenland; and then abuse NATO allies whose troops fought alongside the U.S. in its post-9/11 wars.
"We've never needed them," Trump told Fox News, adding: "We have never really asked anything of them.
"They'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines."
Just in the case of the United Kingdom, 457 British troops were killed in Afghanistan and another 179 in Iraq, while waging former President George W. Bush’s “global war on terror.”
Denmark lost 43 service members in Afghanistan and eight in Iraq.
‘Permanent damage’
Now that 2026 is here, November’s midterm elections are starting to engulf everything in Washington, especially for endangered Republicans like Lawler who have tried to create distance from Trump without enraging his MAGA base.
While Lawler and others in the GOP straddle that Trumpian tightrope, Democrats insist they won’t let them off the hook for letting Trump embarrass America on the world stage.
“Trump's craziness has done permanent damage,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) told Raw Story.
Boyle, who serves on NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly — a body comprised of 281 parliamentarians from 32 countries — is visiting the organization in Brussels next month. He expects to perform damage control.
“This is doing permanent damage,” he stressed.
In the wake of Trump’s gaffes in Switzerland, Boyle got started on international diplomacy early, after American allies freaked out and blew up his phone throughout the week.
‘President was a draft dodger’
Other members of Congress have also been trying to clean up the president’s international messes, many of which predated the Davos disaster.
Last week, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) “spent time with the representative from Greenland and the Danish Ambassador.”
“I think [Trump’s] staff didn't inform him of our relationships with Greenland and Denmark,” Kaptur told Raw Story this week.
The midwestern progressive is embarrassed that President Trump threatens allies with U.S. military might, despite what she dismissed as his own lackluster record on military matters.
“Well, the President was a draft dodger,” the Congresswoman said, “so, yeah, I don't really think he has a sense of the military. I think he views it as his police force.”
Trump, 79, obtained five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, four for academic reasons and one due to a claim to have bone spurs in his heels.
Infamously, in 2015 and 2016, during his first run for president, he stoked controversy by deriding Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, a decorated war hero, for having been captured by Vietnamese forces.
"He's a war hero because he was captured,” Trump said. “I like people that weren't captured.”
Perhaps more infamously still, Trump once told shock jock Howard Stern that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases while dating in New York had been his “own personal Vietnam.”
“I feel like a great and very brave soldier,” he said.
