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Happy Christmas Eve, and here’s your reminder that it’s not normal for an American president to talk about taking over territory that belongs to our allies. Greenland, the Panama Canal, and…Canada. This is, however it’s presented, speculative war talk. It’s invasion talk—how else does one country take over land held by another? We need look no further than Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to answer that.
The countries Trump mentioned haven’t volunteered interest in joining the United States. And it’s hardly realistic to think they would. Perhaps Trump will drop it when he takes office. But it’s not funny, and it’s not a joke. It’s destabilizing, and destabilization is dangerous, especially in a fraught world.
I’m sorry that tonight’s post isn’t one about visions of sugar plums, and I know we all want to be on holiday at the moment, but this is too important to look away from. The idea that there are people sitting around and acting like this is all normal is absolute madness.
This CNN headline is an example:
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“Expansion?” A rival to the Louisiana Purchase? None of these countries are interested in selling. The word they were looking for was invasion. That’s how one country takes over territory from another. In Germany in the 1900s, this need for “expansion” was called Lebensraum, literally, room to live in or elbow room. We all know what happened next.
The German geographer Friedrich Ratzel came up with the term Lebensraum in the early 1900s. Under Hitler and the Third Reich, Lebensraum was used to justify “expansion” to the East. There was angry rhetoric about fulfilling destiny and the notion that those countries were filled with inferior people who the Germans should be permitted to elbow out—Jews and Slavs. They compared it to the American expansion to the West. We should not be surprised that the man who, according to his first wife Ivana, kept a copy of Hitler’s collected early speeches, My New Order, by his bed would go there.
Trump, for the record, denied he’d ever read Hitler’s book Mein Kampf at a 2023 rally. That book laid out Hitler’s justification for his vision and provided the philosophical basis for the Nazi government and, ultimately, for the murder of more than six million Jews during the Holocaust. Trump issued the denial after calling political opponents “vermin” and saying undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” while on the campaign trail, language reminiscent of Nazi propaganda. Trump also claimed he didn’t know Hitler had said anything of those things to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “I know nothing about Hitler,” he insisted. “I have no idea what Hitler said other than (what) I’ve seen on the news. And that’s a very, entirely different thing than what I’m saying.” Trump’s longest serving Chief of Staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, said that during his tenure, Trump suggested that Hitler “did some good things.”
Some things are too important to ignore, even on Christmas Eve. Trump is not making friendly jokes with our neighbor Canada about becoming the 51st state. Greenland has its own indigenous people and a long-time relationship with Denmark. Panama’s conservative President José Raúl Mulino released a video reminding anyone who cared to tune in that “every square meter of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to belong” to Panama. What Trump is doing is dangerous. On top of his lukewarm support for NATO, it could threaten post-World War II stability.
Experience has shown that Trump will back down and abandon plans in the face of persistent opposition. The bully does not have the courage of conviction. We saw that when he distanced himself from Project 2025 after its exposure and extensive discussion in the news during the campaign. But he has realigned himself with its goals during the transition period, now that public opposition has dissipated. We saw it happen recently when Trump broke with Robert Kennedy Jr.’s views on polio vaccines after crazy nonsense about a Kennedy ally opposing them surfaced. Senator Mitch McConnell, a childhood polio survivor, made his opposition to that view plain as public outrage swelled. “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed—they’re dangerous,” McConnell said, a view he has unfortunately not shared publicly about a second Trump presidency. It was enough for Trump to back down.
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There is a path to stop crazy, but it’s one that requires focused and sustained public opposition. We know that in Trump 2.0, it will be important to pick battles carefully. Threatening the sovereignty of friendly nation-states, especially those we rely on for strategic support, in such a cavalier fashion is one of those moments. And he’s not even president yet.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
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