All posts tagged "nato"

These spineless cowards must act before Trump's madness spirals out of control

NATO is now involved. It has shot down an Iranian missile heading into Turkish airspace. Turkey is a NATO member housing a major U.S. military base where the U.S. has nuclear weapons, including B-61 thermonuclear bombs. NATO’s Article 5 says an attack on one member of the alliance is considered an attack on all.

The United Kingdom has granted the U.S. access to its military bases for strikes on Iran. France is building a coalition to protect commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal. The Netherlands is weighing France’s request to help secure these shipping routes. The White House says Spain will cooperate with the U.S. military (Spain disputes this). Greece is sending planes and warships to its neighbor Cyprus. Lebanon is ordering a mass evacuation in the country’s south.

Meanwhile, Russia, which has a strategic partnership treaty with Iran, is accusing the U.S. of using an “imaginary threat” from Iran as a pretext for overthrowing its constitutional order. Putin calls the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a “cynical violation of all norms of human morals and the international law.”

Russia, Iran, and Venezuela are the world’s top producers of heavy crude oil that’s exported to dozens of nations to be processed by their refineries. This means that, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed and much of Iran’s oil-producing capacity under attack, China — which had been the largest buyer of Iranian oil — will almost surely become more dependent on Russian oil, drawing the two superpowers closer.

Iran reports that more than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli and American strikes. So far, 11 people have died in Israel as Iran has fired back. Six U.S. service members have been killed. We don’t have reports on the numbers injured.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war is rapidly escalating into a global conflict.

What about you and me and every other American? Who is representing our interests? Let me remind you, the U.S. Congress has not declared war, even though Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution expressly grants this power to Congress — not to the president.

It is part of what are known as “Enumerated Powers” — powers reserved to Congress, to the people’s representatives. Only Congress is authorized to “declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.”

So why are we at the precipice of World War III? What is our reason for committing so many troops at such great cost and risk? What is America’s interest?

Trump isn’t saying, except to talk in vague generalities about Iran’s nuclear capacities — which experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency and in our own intelligence community say have been grossly exaggerated by Trump.

Where are the progressive voices warning of how a war like this can so easily escalate out of control? Where are the historians telling us how other such calamities have begun? Where are voices explaining all the domestic needs we are sacrificing to finance the U.S. military machine?

I’m no isolationist. I believe America has responsibilities around the world. But I’m not even hearing much from the “America First” gang on the right reminding Trump’s MAGA base that the war he is pulling us into violates a basic tenet of why he was elected.

Trump has launched a war in the Middle East that is already killing and wounding large numbers of men, women, and children. But he’s done it without our consent, without a plan, without a strategy, and without any clear idea about where it leads or how it ends.

***

On Wednesday afternoon, Senate Republicans voted to block a measure from advancing that would limit Trump’s power to continue waging war against Iran without congressional authorization, turning back an effort by Democrats to insist that Congress weigh in on a sweeping and open-ended military campaign.

The 53-to-47 vote against taking up the measure was largely along party lines. (Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted with Republicans against the measure, while GOP Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was the sole Republican who voted with Democrats in favor if it.)

Today’s vote was just the latest in a series of failed war powers resolution efforts in both the House and Senate as Democrats have tried, but repeatedly failed, to rein in Trump’s ability to act without consulting with Congress.

It is still important to call on your members of Congress to use their power to put a stop to this deadly war. Contact them now at: (202) 224-3121.

Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

Alarming steps by US allies show who Trump really serves

Donald Trump is doing something to America that no foreign adversary has ever managed, something Vladimir Putin’s been dreaming about for decades: he’s convincing our oldest and closest allies, countries we fought wars to defend and liberate, and with whom we share a democratic system of government, that the United States can’t be trusted.

For example, France’s government just announced it’s ripping U.S. videoconferencing platforms — Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and others — out of its government offices nationwide and replacing them with a new French-created system called “Visio.”

That’s roughly 2.5 million French public employees who’ll no longer be using American digital products because the French have concluded that U.S. tech — and the Silicon Valley billionaires’ pathetic fealty to Trump, bringing him bribes and gifts and groveling in front of him — is a national security risk.

And it’s not just France: the German state of Schleswig‑Holstein just moved 44,000 employees off Microsoft and over to an open-source platform, and is now considering replacing Windows with Linux. They also dumped Microsoft’s SharePoint file-sharing system, going with open source Nextcloud.

We’re no longer seen as a reliable partner: many of our former allies now view us as a potential enemy.

Denmark’s government, Swiss authorities, Austria, and other European countries are exploring or implementing similar moves. The EU’s senior official for tech sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen, said that Europe’s dependence on American technology “can be weaponized against us.” As ABC News reported:

“A decisive moment came last year when the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor after the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of President Donald Trump.

“The sanctions led Microsoft to cancel [International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Asad Ahmad] Khan’s ICC email, a move that was first reported by The Associated Press and sparked fears of a ‘kill switch’ that Big Tech companies can use to turn off service at will.”

It’s the same reason Canada is reconsidering purchasing F-35s from America, which would be another major economic and strategic blow to us. Under a leader as corrupt, mentally ill, and erratic as Trump, few countries are willing to have their essential tech or defense infrastructure vulnerable to his whims and tantrums.

Even more shocking, the National Security Desk reports:

“In a stunning shift announced today, NATO stripped the United States of command of all three of its operational‑level Joint Force Commands — the four‑star headquarters responsible for leading the Alliance in crisis and war.

“For the first time since NATO’s founding, every major operational command will now be led by European officers. The United Kingdom will assume command of JFC Norfolk, Italy will take over JFC Naples, and Germany and Poland will rotate leadership of JFC Brunssum. SACEUR remains American for now, but only symbolically; today’s tectonic move makes a future European SACEUR a matter of timing, not theory.”

This isn’t about Europeans “hating America” any more than than No Kings protestors calling out Trump’s fascist actions means they despise our country.

Quite simply, European leaders — like millions of Americans — are looking at Trump’s naked embrace of Putin, his open contempt for democracy, and his casual threats against NATO allies and concluding that no critical tech or defense system should ever again depend on the whims of this narcissistic wannabe American strongman.

Speaking of wannabe strongmen, ABC added:

“Billionaire Elon Musk is also a factor. Officials worry about relying on his Starlink satellite internet system...”

Analysts now explicitly warn that Trump’s and his toadies’ hostility to the EU and his willingness to weaponize sanctions and economic tools have made Silicon Valley firms look more like extensions of an unpredictable strongman who ignores the law, rather than the neutral digital providers they’ve historically positioned themselves as.

After all, if you’re a European defense or interior minister, you have to ask yourself: what happens to our communications and data if Trump wakes up pissed off at us one morning because we didn’t leap high enough when he yelled “Jump!”

Even more distressing, the damage isn’t just confined to tech. It’s hitting the very heart of the Western alliance system — which we largely created — that has kept relative peace since World War II. It’s been Putin’s goal for decades, and now he’s getting exactly what he wants from Trump.

When Trump said he would “encourage” Russia to attack NATO allies that, he claimed, weren’t “paying up,” European leaders didn’t shrug it off as a joke. European Council President Charles Michel called the comments “reckless,” correctly saying that such statements “serve only Putin’s interest” and undermine the core promise of mutual defense. Of course, serving Putin’s — rather than America’s — interests is exactly what Trump has been doing for a decade now.

Even NATO’s Secretary General felt compelled, once again, to publicly restate that Article 5 — the pledge that an attack on one is an attack on all — remains “ironclad,” slapping down the President of the United States.

As Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said in response to Trump threatening to unleash Putin on Europe:

“He’s more interested in aggrandizing himself and pleasing Putin than protecting our allies. It would be enough to make Reagan ill.”

Schiff’s sentiments were echoed by Charles Michel, the president of the European Council:

“Reckless statements on #NATO’s security and Art 5 solidarity serve only Putin’s interest. They do not bring more security or peace to the world. On the contrary, they reemphasize the need for the #EU to urgently further develop its strategic autonomy and invest in its defense.”

So, here we are: the head of NATO and the head of the European Council reduced to reassuring the world that America’s president doesn’t speak for the alliance when he invites Russia to attack its members. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, couldn’t have come up with something more bizarre.

European security analysts now talk openly about “low trust” and “ruptures and new realities” in their relations with the United States. One EU security study notes that Trump has shown “elements of active hostility against the European project,” highlighting his bizarre, paranoid claim that the EU was set up to “screw” the US, as well as his refusal to rule out the use of force to annex Greenland.

And now Trump has his emissary visiting rightwing and neo-Nazi parties and think tanks in Europe, offering them American cash and support. He and Putin appear totally committed to making the world safe for dictators and oligarchs by damaging the democracies of the world.

America’s and democracy’s enemies, of course, are thrilled. As one European think‑tank piece put it bluntly, Trump’s rhetoric is “a gift to Putin.” When the president of the United States trashes NATO, praises autocrats, and undermines the EU while half of Ukraine is being tormented by brutal cold, the man in the Kremlin doesn’t have to spend a ruble to fracture the West. Trump, like a dutiful dog, is doing it for him.

And this isn’t just elite hand‑wringing at the level of governments and ministers; ordinary Europeans are recalibrating their relationship with America, too. Surveys over the past year show European opinions of the United States dropping sharply, a reality we also see in the collapse of European vacationers to the United States.

One EU institute reports that nearly three‑quarters of Europeans now see the United States as a “somewhat or very unreliable” partner now, with average Germans among the most skeptical.

A broader survey across Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, and Italy found U.S. favorability down, sometimes by double digits, with only about one-in-ten respondents expressing real trust in Trump’s America to defend them.

Another poll summarized by Politico found that even a majority of Canadians now see the US as a “negative global force,” driven largely by Trump’s erratic behavior and his obsession with self-enrichment, having already collected an estimated $4 billion for himself and his family since he was sworn to office.

Put simply, our allies are doing what any rational nation would do when a key partner goes rogue: they’re hedging.

They’re hedging by building their own tech infrastructure, so that Trump can’t flip a switch and cut off vital services or demand back-doors into their communications systems or share information with Putin. So Trump can’t hand them over to Putin the way he is Ukraine. They’re hedging by embracing “strategic autonomy,” aka European defense capabilities that don’t rely on Washington or anybody in America.

Meanwhile, here at home, Trump and his lickspittle Republicans are busily transforming America into exactly the kind of oligarchic, strongman system our grandparents fought World War II to stop.

He’s pardoned insurrectionists, is purging institutions and installing loyalists, and covering up the child-rape crimes of his billionaire friends, all while aligning himself — and, thus, America — with oligarchs and dictators abroad.

When you combine that internal authoritarian drift with external contempt for allies and admiration for Putin, you get the worst of all worlds: a United States that can no longer credibly lead democratic nations and may increasingly act as a spoiler on behalf of strongmen, grifters, and oligarchs worldwide. And, of course, on behalf of Putin.

Trump promised to “make America great again.” Instead, he’s teaching the rest of the free world that they need to live without us. All to our and our children’s detriment.

Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and SiriusXM talk show host. His Substack can be found here.

Bully Trump just got battered

As I wrote this column, Donald Trump was speaking at the Davos Economic Summit. This event rightly has often been derided for pandering to elites and corporations while shallowly nodding to concerns about the environment, civil rights and economic inequality as the billionaires and world leaders fly in on their private jets.

But this year it was at the center of the fear and chaos over Trump’s war on NATO and Europe, his demand for a Nobel Peace Prize, and his desire to seize Greenland.

In his rambling speech, lying about his so-called accomplishments, Trump appeared to rule out using military force to take Greenland (after implying for days that he would seize it, as he put it, “the hard way” if he needed to do so). But, Trump said, he wants “immediate negotiations” to acquire Greenland because it is “undefended.” He’s made repeated false claims that it is being circled by Russian and Chinese ships.

Was this another Trump TACO? Possibly. But don’t think he won’t threaten World War III again, nor demand the Nobel Peace Prize again in return for not waging war as he continues to grab for Greenland. We’ve come to know the tired performance in which Trump demands the world’s attention, the media complies, and international relations are damaged.

Greenland, of course, is, always has been, and — barring any change in circumstances — always will be “defended” because it is part of NATO. That means the U.S. is defending it, along with the rest of the alliance. So everything that’s happened in the past few days around this issue is pure idiocy, and all about Trump’s ego and his desire to own land which I’m sure he’d like to rename “Trumpland.”

But that’s what we have come to expect from the debilitating dictator who is waging war on his own country, sending thousands of violent goons to terrorize Minneapolis while continuing to dodge the Epstein files.

The world, for its part, is moving on. The speech at Davos by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney was a powerful synthesis of this. There is a new world order, he said, as the U.S. not only cannot be relied upon for stability; it can’t be trusted in any agreements and will at any time lash out with punishing tariffs or threats of domination.

This new order will be a painful adjustment for the world and, in particular, those considered long-time allies of the U.S. But the people most hurt will be Americans, seeing Trump rip up trade agreements as the rest of the world makes new alliances. The very people who voted for Trump, hoping he was going to make life more affordable, will be more miserable than ever.

As Ryan Cooper reported at the American Prospect, Trump, in repealing the government investments in green energy in the Inflation Reduction Act, has already doomed the American car industry with his war on electric vehicles:

Now, thanks to that betrayal, plus Trump’s lunatic trade and foreign policy in general, the American auto industry is bleeding out.

Consider Canada, which has historically been one of the biggest markets for American cars, being quite similar culturally, already heavily integrated into the U.S. auto industry (along with Mexico), and also one of the few places that will buy our big stupid trucks.

America’s share of the Canadian auto market has been tumbling, down from about half in the previous decade to just 36 percent, because of Trump’s deranged trade war and threats of annexation, which has sparked a massive nationalist backlash and a mounting customer boycott of anything American.

And that brings me back to Carney’s speech. He urged world leaders not to continue to yearn for a past order whose presentation was pretty fictional anyway:

Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied — the WTO, the UN, the COP, the very architecture of collective problem-solving — are under threat. As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains. And this impulse is understandable.

A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

Carney urged the “middle powers” of the world to unite — economically, militarily, and geopolitically — to become a force that can stand up to the great powers. It’s ambitious, but it’s the only thing that they can do, he said. As the European Union leaders described new trade deals with India, Brazil, China, and other countries, Carney also touted new trade agreements:

We’ve agreed to a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements. We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months.
In the past few days, we’ve concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We’re negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.

The U.S. is pulling itself away while many of its spurned friends are making new alliances. As Carney noted, this is about survival and the inability to count on the U.S.:

The question for middle powers like Canada is not whether to adapt to the new reality — we must.

The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls or whether we can do something more ambitious.

Now, Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture. Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security, that assumption is no longer valid. And our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, has termed value-based realism.

Or, to put it another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic. Principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter and respect for human rights.

And then this line:

Our view is the middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.

In the first Trump administration there was an idea that Trump was an aberration. The hope was that he or someone like him would never return. The U.S. would go back to the order of the last century, and, even with all its flaws — including the U.S. and other great powers continually exempting themselves from the rules — it would all work out. But now there’s the realization that it’s done. And Carney sees it as a moment of opportunity and even liberation.

We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine co-operation.

The powerful have their power. But we have something too: the capacity to stop pretending, to name realities, to build our strength at home and to act together.

That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.

With that, Carney laid it out for the business and political leaders of the world, receiving a standing ovation.

Trump today ranted and lied at Davos, and he will continue to do so whenever he speaks. But he is making himself and the U.S. more and more irrelevant, as much of the world has no choice but to move on and find safety by joining together and making new friends.

In forcing that, Trump is making America weaker by the day. Can we bring the country back? That will depend on the 2026 elections — and all of us working hard to stop the GOP from enabling him — as well as on the 2028 elections. And, though it perhaps can be done, whoever becomes president will have an enormous task in gaining the trust of the world once again.

This world-class blunder has even Trump's kingmaker anguished

Before he TACO’d at Davos, Donald Trump’s vow to take Greenland by hook or crook because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize was next level insanity prancing on the world stage. (No Donnie dear, they’re not laughing at you, they’re laughing because of you).

Prompting a collective eye roll from EU leaders at Davos on Wednesday, Trump’s bellicose nonsense — “demanding” that European sovereigns bow to him on Greenland or face economic blackmail via more tariffs — revealed a shocking combination of hubris and cognitive failure. Trump is at once illustrating his ignorance of the post-WWII NATO alliance that has kept America safe for 80 years, while showcasing an inability to learn from his own mistakes by doubling down on already ruinous tariffs.

Regardless of whether EU leaders ultimately placate the madman or punch him back, only harder, Trump’s threats against Greenland were a world class blunder.

Putin licks his lips

The only country poised to benefit from Trump’s Greenland insanity is Russia. After Vladimir Putin personally approved an operation to promote “mentally unstable” Trump (the Kremlin’s words, not mine) in the 2016 US election, weakening the U.S. and NATO looks like Putin’s payout. It may take years to unravel whether it was pre-planned between Trump and Putin, ie: treason, or simply reflects a global realignment driven by Trump and Putin’s self-interests and shared delusions of grandeur.

Putin and Trump have each expressed a preference for rule by force rather than law, with Trump recently claiming he has “no need” for international law. Putin concurs. After helping a “mentally unstable” man with no comprehension of world history achieve the US presidency, Putin knows that Trump’s threats against Greenland have permanently debunked the west’s criticism of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Greenlanders may pay the price for Trump’s insanity in the near future, but Ukrainians are paying for it today.

Russia is hyperventilating with excitement. Breathlessly describing a scenario in which “one NATO member is going to attack another NATO member,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted earlier this week that, “It was hard to imagine before that such a thing could happen.” Lavrov said Trump’s threats against Greenland “have upended” the western concept of the “rule-based global order,” a concept Putin has long loathed.

By creating a vacuum where the rule of international law and respect for sovereignty once reigned, Trump has invited all rogue actors — not just Putin — to do their worst. Even Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the man who did more than anyone to put Trump back in office, gets it. Proving that broken clocks are right twice a day, McConnell said that Trump alienating allies on Greenland and “going it alone would be strategic malpractice. Courting Russia and its GDP of $2.5 trillion … At the expense of longstanding bonds with Europe and its GDP of $27 trillion? That doesn’t even align with U.S. economic interests, let alone our values.”

Glad to see the GOP still understands basic math when it wants to make a point.

Trump trashes instruments of peace

During the first half of the 20th century, more than 100 million people died agonizing deaths over the course of two world wars. The UN charter sprang from the wreckage, with the stated determination to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.”

In Article I, the charter seeks to ‘maintain international peace and security,’ by taking “collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace” in conformity with international law.

NATO complements the UN Charter by putting teeth into UN peace mandates. It backs the UN framework for collective security with military strength. NATO’s Article 5 states that if one NATO ally is attacked, every other member will consider it an “armed attack against all members.” If Trump invades Denmark’s territory, in other words, he will trigger 2.8 million active troops’ obligation to return fire- against the U.S. aggressor.

Evil started WWII. Cowardice may start WWIII

Trump has always shared Russia’s resentment of NATO. In 1987, after his first trip to Moscow, Trump took out full-page, anti-NATO ads, and has been at it ever since.

The maddening through line today is that Congress has the power to stop Trump, but Republicans who know better are refusing to act. Short of removing Trump from office, Congress could slam shut the purse, block Trump from “running” any country outside the U.S., restrict the use of appropriated defense funds, or pass a War Powers Resolution to stop Trump from starting WWIII. But they haven’t. All we hear from the GOP, despite the obvious danger of the moment, are speeches.

McConnell delivered a nice one. After he voted against the War Powers Act, he postured with a speech about Trump’s threats in Greenland: “Unless and until the President can demonstrate otherwise, then the proposition at hand today is very straightforward: (Trump is) incinerating the hard-won trust of loyal (EU) allies in exchange for no meaningful change in U.S. access to the Arctic.”

He added, “(T)his is about more than Greenland. It’s about more than America’s relationship with its highly capable Nordic allies. It’s about whether the United States intends to face a constellation of strategic adversaries with capable friends … or commit an unprecedented act of strategic self-harm and go it alone.”

By threatening a semi-autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, Trump issued a direct threat against Europe and NATO, deliberately weakening the alliance that fought to defeat Hitler and fascism in WWII.

On Monday, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe spoke directly to the 38 percent of US adults who consume Fox/ Sinclair media Trump propaganda exclusively:

“We need to ask ourselves, on both sides of the Atlantic, if we want to live in a world where democracy is recast as weakness, truth as opinion and justice as an option.”

He closed with a warning:

“When Europe insists on sovereignty and accountability, it is not posturing. International law is either universal or meaningless. Greenland will show which one we choose.”

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

'I lost friends there': Prince Harry uncorks scathing response to Trump's NATO comments

Prince Harry on Friday rebuked President Donald Trump's comments dismissing NATO allies and spoke out about sacrifices among those who fought alongside the United States.

The Duke of Sussex served in the British Army for a decade and did two tours in Afghanistan, among many of the service members who answered the call to serve after NATO invoked Article 5 under the mutual defense agreement following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, NBC News reported.

“I served there. I made lifelong friends there. And I lost friends there. The United Kingdom alone had 457 service personnel killed,” he said. “Thousands of lives were changed forever. Mothers and fathers buried sons and daughters. Children were left without a parent. Families are left carrying the cost.”

“Those sacrifices deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect, as we all remain united and loyal to the defense of diplomacy and peace,” the Duke of Sussex said.

In an interview Thursday with Fox News from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump questioned NATO allies' reliability, and claimed the U.S. "never needed them" and that allies sent troops to Afghanistan but "stayed a little back, a little off the front lines." Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk also hit back at Trump's statement.

"The American officers who accompanied me then, told me that America would never forget the Polish heroes. Perhaps they will remind President Trump of that fact," Tusk wrote on X.

Several other European leaders have spoken out in response against Trump's comments, including UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer, who called the president's statements "insulting and frankly, appalling."

'Eleven years of this': Swing-seat Republican shrugs off Trump’s Davos 'pandemonium'

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.

'Stunning speech': MS NOW reporter astounded by Trump’s 'rambling' and lies to Europe

An MS NOW reporter was stunned following President Donald Trump's shift away from suggesting he would use military force to seize Greenland and his comments to world leaders on Wednesday.

Ravi Agrawal described a full room at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where people were anticipating hearing Trump's comments on the Arctic island, NATO and the future of the United States' relationship with European nations.

"Gosh, I mean, a lot of people here calling it performance art, or maybe performance imperialism. This was a stunning speech, I've been to many Davoses over the last 15 years, I've never seen one speech that was this anticipated with this many hundreds of people trying to get in because they wanted to see in person Trump repeat the threats he has made on social media and add some balas to it."

During the 90 minutes, the first 30 minutes were scripted, Agrawal said. And that he didn't bring up Greenland until the end.

"Ever the showman, he knew that that is the only reason why people had come in to listen to him in the numbers that they did, and of course, he didn't disappoint," Agrawal said. "The points he made were rambling, he said that NATO has never done anything for the United States, which is absolutely untrue. The only time Article 5 of NATO has been invoked is to defend the United States after 9/11. And Greenland, Denmark, more than any other country, has lost more troops helping Americans more than any other country as a percentage of their population."

People were curious if Trump would repeat his claims on social media in front of the world leaders.

"These are facts that everyone in the audience knew about, but they were there to see whether Trump would repeat all of these lies in person and whether he would add some more weight to his threats," Agrawal said.

"The question now is whether European leaders will add some action to their words. I have to say I am seeing for the first time in a long time, European leaders really resolve in a strong way to do more than just words because they realize how serious this now is," he added.

Appeasement never works — it's time for Europe to deploy its ultimate weapon

TO: European leaders

From: Robert Reich.

It is impossible to appease a tyrant.

You know this better than most. I need not remind you of Neville Chamberlain's interactions with Adolf Hitler in 1938. Chamberlain met Hitler three times, culminating in the infamous Munich Agreement, which allowed Germany to annex Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland in exchange for Hitler's promise of peace.

Returning to London, Chamberlain waved a signed Anglo-German declaration, and famously declared "peace for our time.” Instead, Chamberlain had merely emboldened Hitler’s aggression. Hitler soon broke his promise, leading to World War II.

On Tuesday, on his “Truth Social” platform, Donald Trump reposted a comment saying, “China and Russia are the boogeymen when the real threat is the U.N., NATO and [Islam].”

This is madness.

You struck a trade deal with Trump last year. He is now threatening to rip it up and apply economic coercion and even military force if you do not allow him to annex Greenland. He is also on the brink of allowing Russia to annex part of Ukraine.

Most Americans are as opposed to Trump’s wild and illegal actions as you are. But we have no means of expressing our opposition because Trump’s Republicans control Congress and, in effect, the Supreme Court. You do have means.

I urge you to activate your so-called anti-coercion instrument, colloquially known as the “trade bazooka,” which will block some of America’s access to EU markets or impose export controls, among a broader list of potential countermeasures.

The time for appeasing Trump is over.

Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org

This Trump vulgarity is deadly serious — it's pushed us to the brink of war

Although it is hard to quantify such things, one of the most repugnant acts Donald Trump committed in his first term was presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the sleazoid Rush Limbaugh.

It happened in February 2020, during the State of the Union address. Incomparable Speaker Nancy Pelosi, herself a much-deserving recipient of the honor, famously tore up Trump’s speech, a moment that became the highlight of the evening, and a snaphost of history.

Awarding the medal to the despicable racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic — did I miss anything? — Limbaugh disgraced our nation’s highest civilian honor.

Trump did not do this in the traditional ceremony in a White House setting. He deliberately staged a grotesque spectacle in what used to be the revered House chamber — before Jan 6 insurrectionists and Speaker Mike Johnson soiled it. Introduced by Harry Truman and expanded upon by John F. Kennedy, the medal has been a defining measure of valiant citizenship.

Since then, Trump has crassly turned it into an award for allegiance to one man, as evidenced by Sean Hannity receiving it too. I should imagine that the medal was liquified once it touched the demonic Fox News host.

I’ve been thinking about that Limbaugh moment since Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado presented Trump with something he did not deserve: her Nobel Peace Prize medal.

The Nobel Committee and Foundation quickly clarified that the prize cannot be transferred or shared. Trump, sickly obsessed with winning a Nobel, accepted the framed medal because he believes he deserves one for “ending eight wars.” He didn’t, of course. Public figures in Norway called the gesture “absurd,” warning that it damaged the reputation of an award meant to honor genuine contributions to human dignity and peace.

Human dignity and peace are about as far away from Trump as Norway.

To make matters even more perverse and offensive, Trump sent a missive to Norway’s prime minister over the weekend, declaring that because he was not awarded the Peace Prize, he “no longer feel[s] an obligation to think purely of peace.”

The petty tyrant conflated his perceived “snub” with his broader geopolitical delusion that Greenland — governed by Denmark — should belong to him.

Trump’s behavior is an affront to every individual who has earned the Nobel Peace Prize. I was honored to work for a few years with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC), which shared the Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore in 2007.

I helped lead a multi-year, global public relations effort on behalf of the UNIPCC. We assisted some of the 800 scientists in communicating their vaunted research in the run-up to the signing of the 2015 Paris Climate Accords — an agreement Trump has tried to bludgeon into irrelevance.

I can tell you from experience that those scientists deserved the Nobel. They are heroes. They work for the panel without pay, devoting their lives to slowing the existential threat of global warming.

They are making a real difference in the lives of all of us. Trump trashes them, just as he demeans all Peace Prize recipients who labor for the greater good.

Global and national honors are meant to do something remarkable. They exist for a reason. They rise above politics, controversy, and selfish ambition, and function as a civic trust. They are instruments that tell future generations what a society values, remembers, and aspires to become. Instead of lighting a path forward, Trump regresses, seeking to mangle, warp and darken.

He has also tried to disfigure, distort, and obscure the illustrious John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and its acclaimed annual Honors. Both were designed as cultural pedestals, celebrating artistic excellence and contribution. Trump not only slapped his name — illegally — onto the building and its hallways, he also hijacked the awards themselves.

His selections for the Kennedy Center Honors read like a variety show from 50 years ago: a cultural era Trump longs to resurrect. While artistic judgment is inherently subjective, Trump pushed his involvement to absurd lengths, ostentatiously inserting himself as host and centerpiece of the awards ceremony.

The resulting record-low ratings were fitting payback for his intrusion. But Trump will return, and rechristen the awards as the Trump-Kennedy Center Honors. The horror of it all.

His behavior regarding the Nobel Peace Prize reveals the same pattern. Unable to control an institution, Trump attempts to delegitimize and overwrite it. He frames the Nobel selection process as biased, rigged, and corrupt, simply because it refuses to validate his ego.

In Trump’s mind, he deserves a peace prize for invading countries, kidnapping leaders, and threatening to seize allied nations — militarily or otherwise — against the will of their people. Yes, those are truly Nobel-worthy credentials.

In Trump’s bulbously blubbering brain, honors are not earned through humility, sacrifice, or talent. They exist to soothe his profound insecurities or to serve as props for his vain and simpleminded supporters.

To Trump, the very definition of a sybarite, honors are reduced to plaques of undeserved adulation and favoritism. Prestige is replaced by pettiness. Achievement becomes irrelevant.

This is where “guilt by association” becomes dangerous. Trump does not accidentally tarnish institutions. He intentionally sullies them so they can no longer judge him, restrain his future abuses, or stand as moral counterweights to his behavior. He wants to appear bigger than the institutions, and the awards, themselves.

Instead, as with everything else he touches, Trump diminishes their luster and corrodes the legitimacy of earning honor through merit.

To him, these honors are merely extensions of personal and presidential branding. It’s no different from the bogus Wikipedia entry Trump shared, claiming he was the “acting president of Venezuela.” He seeks to falsify his biography by implying he has the Nobel, or positioning himself as the arbiter of American culture.

Honors are fragile. They only work when they belong to a free society, not to an autocratic asinine officeholder desperate for shameful praise.

Trump thinks he’s writing a glorious history all about himself. But this history he’s creating steps over the line, and lands in the dustbin of history. One day, Trump’s name will sit alongside Caligula, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Tsar Nicholas II.

All failed emperors, who never knew when to stop.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

'The president is an idiot': Senator unloads on Trump's 'really dumb' obsession

A Democratic lawmaker Thursday shot down President Donald Trump's push to take over Greenland.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) had a stern response to Trump's threats to take the island nation and Danish territory, despite the country's foreign minister and Danish foreign minister pushing back and saying Trump lied in his main claim about why the United States should seize the country.

Gallego was asked in an interview with MS NOW if there was a way to address Trump's security concerns without handing over Greenland — and he didn't hold back.

"No, because this has nothing to do with actual security concerns. This is the president being an idiot, and he is really excited about the idea of taking this big piece of land that's on a map, and he's using any excuse to actually cover up his idiotic idea," Gallego said.

Gallego accused Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — whom he referred to as "court jesters" — of green-lighting the move without understanding the real repercussions the move could have on the country's relationship with other nations.

"And then you have people like, you know, JD Vance and Marco Rubio, they're coming up with all these weird excuses. 'We have access to Greenland, we have a base in Greenland. The kingdom of Denmark has said you could expand all the bases you want. They have they have agreed to to work with us on economic issues. They've agreed to any type of economic treaty that to secure mineral rights,' whatever it is, they'll do anything because they certainly don't want to work," Gallego argued. "But this is just a fit of fancy this president is having. And then all his court jesters around him are coming up with an excuse, because the real excuse is because the real reason is really dumb."

Gallego added what he really thought of the ordeal, which experts have said could signal the end of NATO if the U.S. were to attack a key ally.

"It's just the president is an idiot, and we're all trying to come up with excuses. But the fact is, at the core base, this president is an idiot," he said. "And now he's putting that foreign policy into effect, which is going to negatively affect us and the long run in terms of our national security."