Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 16 January 2026
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column, Founded 1932
Seriously?
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – A president brandishing the mightiest nation’s military might and making threats may or may not be serious, but those on the receiving end cannot know this. Ask the people of Greenland. What they do know is that following the stunning and expertly executed capture of Venezuelan President Maduro, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cheered the mission, writing on social media, “Maduro is the newest person to find out that President Trump means what he says.”
Also taking Trump at his word are NATO allies France, Germany, Sweden, and, of course, Denmark, which have dispatched troops to Greenland ostensibly to participate in a NATO exercise dubbed “Arctic Endurance,” but in reality and incredibly to defend the island from another NATO ally, the United States.
If this had been written as fiction, no publisher would have printed it. No one – well, perhaps no one except an apologist dismissing it all as bluff and bluster, of Trump being Trump – would have believed it.
When President Trump first proposed taking Greenland, it did not seem serious. Why would a great nation like the United States want this large and sparsely populated island in the North Atlantic Ocean?
It is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and we have a treaty with Denmark that grants U.S. access for military bases. What more do we need? Rare earth minerals. Trump says these are needed to assure national security in the decades ahead. So, he vows to take Greenland “the hard way” if the island’s leaders and the Danish government do not acquiesce to his threat.
Nobody can quite believe there could be a shooting war that pits NATO countries against the United States, but then there is Trump’s rhetoric, meant to threaten and intimidate. And there is his mockery of Greenland’s defenses as “two dogsleds.” Taking Greenland by force is opposed by most Americans, and an increasing number of Republicans are voicing their opposition, including former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who denounced Trump’s advisors for promoting the takeover, declaring in a thunderous speech, “I am sick of stupid.”
There are too many instances of Trump’s threats when the once unthinkable becomes normalized. He likes to “joke,” he says, and then the joke is on us. That is how we got the Donald J. Trump takeover of the Kennedy Center,  the destruction of the East Wing of the White House to make room for a ballroom, and the threat to make Canada the 51st state. But in fairness to friends and foes alike, he is also threatening Iran over that nation’s brutal crackdown on demonstrators (appropriately so if there is a viable plan). He is threatening Cuba. And when he is not threatening with guns, he threatens with tariffs, which the Supreme Court is likely to rule as unconstitutional.
Undeterred, he has warned our NATO allies that he may impose higher tariffs against them if they try to prevent his takeover of Greenland.
And the threats keep coming.
He may run for a constitutionally banned third term. He may stop the midterm elections. He is again ruminating about invoking the Insurrection Act to put down civil unrest in Minneapolis, where an ICE agent shot and killed a woman.
Numerous videos taken at the scene do not show the ICE agent facing imminent danger, but Trump seems intent on pushing federal authority to the limits and inflaming communities he accuses of harboring illegal immigrants.
Citizens and non-citizens alike are taking him seriously and a blanket of fear is covering the country as masked agents in tactical gear swarm into areas where immigrants have settled. There will likely be more confrontations as ICE agents and border control agents push the boundaries to meet deportation numbers demanded by the White House.
As conservative podcaster and Trump supporter Joe Rogan remarked, “Are we really gonna be the Gestapo, 'Where's your papers?' Is that what we've come to?”
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
© 2026 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc
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END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND