In the olden days, when people had their property confiscated, their freedom crushed, and their lives destroyed in the name of Marxism, their fate was inflicted by strongmen like Joseph Stalin. Nowadays, there is the added humiliation of being menaced with this malicious ideology by metrosexual soy boys like Zohran Mamdani and silver spoon AWFLs like his henchwoman Cea Weaver, who cannot find the inner strength to deal with being called out on her hypocrisy.
The New York Post reports on Weaver, Mamdani’s Commissar for Socialized Housing:
The 37-year-old, who has faced backlash for blasting homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” in the past, teared up when she emerged briefly from her apartment building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at about 9 a.m.
Weaver, who was tapped by Mamdani to be his new director of the city Office to Protect Tenants, quickly ran back inside after she was asked about the $1.6 million home her mother owns in Nashville, Tennessee.
Only people who have had everything handed to them can believe in an ideology that calls for everything to be handed to everyone at everyone else’s expense.
Because the leftist goal is to make the whole country into a slum, Weaver hates “gentrifiers” who improve lousy neighborhoods:
“There is no such thing as a ‘good’ gentrifier, only people who are actively working on projects to dismantle white supremacy and capitalism and people who aren’t,” Weaver wrote in a 2018 post.
She even complained about the gentrification of her own Crown Heights neighborhood — which the well-to-do commie helped gentrify by living there.
If only we could cure hypocrisy, this would also cure moonbattery.
Communications networks go dark right after start of Tehran protests urged on by exiled crown prince; protesters chant ‘death to the dictator’ and ‘death to the Islamic Republic’
Thousands of people in Iran’s capital shouted from their homes and rallied in the street Thursday night after a call by the country’s exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said, a new escalation in the protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic. Internet access and telephone lines in Iran cut out immediately after the protests began.
The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrations have included cries in support of the Shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fueling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.
Thursday saw a continuation of the demonstrations that popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran on Wednesday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, Iranian security forces have killed at least 45 protesters, including eight minors, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.
Thousands of people in Iran’s capital shouted from their homes and rallied in the street Thursday night after a call by the country’s exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said, a new escalation in the protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic. Internet access and telephone lines in Iran cut out immediately after the protests began.
The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrations have included cries in support of the Shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fueling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.
Thursday saw a continuation of the demonstrations that popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran on Wednesday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, Iranian security forces have killed at least 45 protesters, including eight minors, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.
Thousands of people in Iran’s capital shouted from their homes and rallied in the street Thursday night after a call by the country’s exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said, a new escalation in the protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic. Internet access and telephone lines in Iran cut out immediately after the protests began.
The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrations have included cries in support of the Shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fueling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.
Thursday saw a continuation of the demonstrations that popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran on Wednesday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, Iranian security forces have killed at least 45 protesters, including eight minors, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.2/2Skip Ad
The NGO said Wednesday was the bloodiest day since the demonstrations began, with 13 protesters confirmed to have been killed.
“The evidence shows that the scope of the crackdown is becoming more violent and more extensive every day,” said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding that hundreds more have been wounded and over 2,000 arrested.
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The growth of the protests increases the pressure on Iran’s civilian government and its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. CloudFlare, an internet firm, and the advocacy group NetBlocks reported the internet outage, both attributing it to Iranian government interference. Attempts to dial landlines and mobile phones from Dubai to Iran were connected. Such outages have in the past been followed by intense government crackdowns.
Meanwhile, the protests themselves have remained broadly leaderless. It remains unclear how Pahlavi’s call will affect the demonstrations moving forward.
“The lack of a viable alternative has undermined past protests in Iran,” wrote Nate Swanson of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, who studies Iran.
“There may be a thousand Iranian dissident activists who, given a chance, could emerge as respected statesmen, as labor leader Lech Walesa did in Poland at the end of the Cold War. But so far, the Iranian security apparatus has arrested, persecuted and exiled all of the country’s potential transformational leaders.”
Thursday’s demonstration rallies at home and in the street
Pahlavi had called for demonstrations at 8 p.m. local time on Thursday and Friday. When the clock struck, neighborhoods across Tehran erupted in chanting, witnesses said. The chants included “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic!” Others praised the shah, shouting: “This is the last battle! Pahlavi will return!” Thousands could be seen on the streets.
“Great nation of Iran, the eyes of the world are upon you. Take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands,” Pahlavi said in a statement. “I warn the Islamic Republic, its leader and the [Revolutionary Guard] that the world and [President Donald Trump] are closely watching you. Suppression of the people will not go unanswered.”
Iranian officials appeared to be taking the planned protests seriously. The hard-line Kayhan newspaper published a video online claiming security forces would use drones to identify those taking part.
Iranian officials have offered no acknowledgment of the scale of the overall protests, which raged across many locations Thursday, even before the 8 p.m. demonstration. However, there have been reporting regarding security officials being hurt or killed.
The judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported a police colonel suffered fatal stab wounds in a town outside of Tehran, while the semiofficial Fars news agency said gunmen killed two security force members and wounded 30 others in a shooting in the city of Lordegan in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province.
A deputy governor in Iran’s Khorasan Razavi province told Iranian state television that an attack at a police station killed five people Wednesday night in Chenaran, some 700 kilometers (430 miles) northeast of Tehran.
Iran weighs Trump threat
It remains unclear why Iranian officials have yet to crack down harder on the demonstrators. Trump warned last week that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” America “will come to their rescue.”
Trump’s comments drew a new rebuke from Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
“Recalling the long history of criminal interventions by successive US administrations in Iran’s internal affairs, the Foreign Ministry considers claims of concern for the great Iranian nation to be hypocritical, aimed at deceiving public opinion and covering up the numerous crimes committed against Iranians,” it said.
Biggest protests since Mahsa Amini’s death
Iran has faced rounds of nationwide protests in recent years. As sanctions tightened and Iran struggled after the 12-day war, its rial currency collapsed in December, reaching 1.4 million to $1. Protests began soon after, with demonstrators chanting against Iran’s theocracy.
Prior to Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the rial was broadly stable, trading at around 70 to $1. At the time of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, $1 traded for 32,000 rials. Shops in markets across the country have shut down as part of the protests.
With the announcement that he is withdrawing from the Minnesota governor’s race, Tim Walz is on the hunt for a new career. Fortunately, The Babylon Bee has come up with the following list of jobs he’d be absolutely fabulous for:
Learning Center Director: These have flourished into multi-billion-dollar businesses under his watch.
Chief counselor at the “Pray Away The Straight” camp: What a perfect fit.
One of those wacky inflatable tube men at a car dealership: He’s already doing the motions. Might as well get paid.
Supervisor of the tampon dispenser at a men’s correctional facility: He’s the world’s foremost expert on stocking feminine products in masculine spaces.
Head coach for the Minnesota Vikings: Run that pick-six, Timmy.
Member of the Village People: He would reportedly prefer to be the one who wears leather chaps.
Perverted uncle impersonator: It’s a niche market, but who could be better?
President of Somalia: A natural transition.
Ol’ Tim is certain to land on his feet somewhere. What other jobs would be perfect for him?
Democrats seem to think that laws and policies they don’t like can be thwarted by an angry mob or an insurrectionist governor.
Forget January 6. It turns out January 7 might go down as the date when insurrection really arrived in America — not from the MAGA right, but from the anti-Trump left.
In the aftermath of the fatal shooting Wednesday in Minneapolis of a woman who appears to have tried to ram an ICE agent with her vehicle, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced at a press conference that he had issued a warning order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard to mobilize to “protect Minnesotans” from “rogue ICE agents.”
When asked if the National Guard would be deployed against federal agents, or if anything like that has ever happened before, Walz said, “We’ve never been at war with our federal government,” and at one point told Minnesotans, “do not allow them to deploy federal troops here.”
It’s an almost unbelievable series of statements from a sitting governor. If taken at face value, it amounts to a threat to use the Minnesota National Guard for an anti-federal insurrection — something that has never quite happened in American history (the late 1850s armed conflict between the Mormons and the U.S. Army comes to mind, but Utah was a territory at the time, not a state). If Walz actually follows through with that threat, it will be an open act of sedition.
In that case, the moderate response would be to immediately arrest Walz, federalize the Minnesota National Guard, and declare martial law. Is Walz radical and clueless enough to actually do this? He was willing to let Minneapolis burn in the 2020 BLM riots before he activated the National Guard to restore order, so who knows.
But it’s not just Walz. Every Democrat leader in Minnesota was angling to out-insurrection each other on Wednesday it seems. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told ICE to “get the f*ck out of Minneapolis,” said the idea that the ICE agent was acting in self-defense was “bullsh*t,” and claimed ICE had come to Minneapolis to “literally kill people.” The shooting, Frey declared, was murder.
Frey and Walz are making these statements based on videos everyone has seen. At the time they made them, they had no special knowledge or facts about what happened, beyond what the rest of us had. To deploy this kind of maximal, incendiary rhetoric, in a city and a political climate as volatile as Minneapolis, is tantamount to begging for riots and mob violence from anti-ICE mobs.
Indeed, for many months now Frey and other leading Minnesota Democrats have been demonizing ICE agents and urging their radical base to disrupt lawful ICE operations. Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, currently the leading candidate for one of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seats, urged activists to “put your body on the line” to stop ICE agents from “kidnapping” people.
If Republicans were deploying this kind of rhetoric the left would call it “stochastic terrorism,” a term which refers to the repetition of hostile rhetoric, amplified by news media, with the aim of goading people into committing ideologically motivated violence, randomly and unpredictably. The term gained notoriety in recent years as an epithet left-wing journalists decided to hurl at President Trump.
Yet what’s playing out now in Minnesota is a textbook case of stochastic terrorism — perpetrated by that state’s highest political officeholders. Walz and Frey and Flanagan are calling for (and getting) political vigilantism. The police chief of Minneapolis has urged city residents to call the police if they see masked ICE agents making an arrest, promising that Minneapolis police would intervene. Walz routinely calls ICE agents the Gestapo. So does Frey. So do many leading Democrats all across the country.
Keep in mind, they’re doing this because they don’t want the Trump administration to enforce existing immigration law. These ICE agents have not gone rogue. They are duly authorized by DHS and are conducting lawful operations. Democrat elected officials, not just in Minnesota but across the country, have decided that because they don’t want federal immigration laws to be enforced it’s okay to urge people to interfere, harass, assault, and impede ICE.
As a result, we have a network of anti-ICE activists (including the woman who was shot Wednesday) roaming the country, tracking agents and inserting themselves into ICE operations. Over the past twelve months there have been hundreds of incidents of “protesters” ramming ICE agents with their vehicles. Democrats have encouraged and incited this — all the while knowing that at some point, it would lead to someone getting shot by an ICE agent. Almost like they wanted it to happen.
As I write this, angry mobs are flooding the streets of Minneapolis. Rioters already smashed in the doors of the federal courthouse in downtown Minneapolis. The city might well burn in the coming days, as it did in 2020.
The lawlessness of the leftist mob is to be expected at this point. That’s not to say they shouldn’t all be rounded up and prosecuted at least as severely as the Biden administration prosecuted J6ers. But something must also be done about the Democrat politicians who are inciting violence and, in Walz’s case, flirting with insurrection.
Trump has a chance here to do what he should have done in 2020 during the BLM riots. Whether he acts boldly or falters in the coming days might not just define his presidency. It might also be the defining moment in our national divorce, our Bleeding Kansas, the moment to which we someday look back and say, it was all over after that.
President Trump, who rose to power denouncing the architects of the Iraq War, has ended up embracing their worldview.
Donald Trump is often described as a “populist,” a “nationalist,” or as someone who sits outside the traditional ideological categories. However, when one examines his foreign policy closely, a different picture emerges. Trump is, in practice, a neoconservative.
He is not a neoconservative in the sense we once knew: he does not cloak American interventions in the language of democracy promotion, human rights, or universal values. Instead, he is a neoconservative without the values. What makes him distinctive is not the substance of his policies, but the way he frames them, stripped of the moralizing tone. Oddly enough, this makes his foreign policy more transparent—and perhaps, in some ways, more refreshing.
Classical neoconservatism was never only about hawkish foreign policy. It was about the marriage of power and ideals. The movement argued that American might was essential not just to secure interests but to shape the world in America’s image. Its architects spoke of freedom as a guiding principle and cast interventions as noble missions to uplift societies. The failures in Iraq and Afghanistan discredited much of this idealism, but at least the worldview maintained coherence: American force was justified because it was said to serve universal values.
Trump’s foreign policy, however, looks strikingly similar in its outcomes yet arrives without the pretense. Take Israel. Trump is perhaps the most pro-Israel president in American history. He moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and midwifed the Abraham Accords. These were all longtime neoconservative priorities. Yet Trump did not package these moves as part of a grand moral project. He spoke of them in terms of deals, strength, and straightforward defense of an ally.
Or consider Ukraine. Despite his soft rhetoric toward Vladimir Putin, Trump approved lethal aid for Kyiv in his first term, a step that the Obama administration avoided. He pressured NATO allies to increase their defense spending, a move that neoconservatives had long demanded to strengthen the transatlantic alliance. Again, this was a policy that fit the neoconservative agenda, but Trump never presented it as a struggle between freedom and tyranny. For him, it was about fairness, deterrence, and not letting America be taken advantage of.
The most striking example may be Afghanistan. Trump criticized “forever wars” and promised withdrawals, but he has also recently floated the idea of returning to Afghanistan after the Biden administration’s chaotic exit. That sounds very much like the old neoconservative argument: American credibility requires intervention. The difference is that Trump does not wrap this position in talk of saving Afghan democracy or defending women’s rights. He says it plainly: America cannot look weak.
Paradoxically, there is an element of honesty in this approach. The Iraq War was sold as an effort to liberate a people and plant democracy in the Middle East. Trump, had he been in charge, might have said instead: Saddam Hussein is a threat, and we will remove him to prove our power. It is brutal, transactional, even cynical—but it is clear. For a public that has grown weary of noble lies and disappointed promises, there may be something refreshing in that candor.
Some will object that Trump cannot be called a neoconservative. Didn’t he run against the neocons? Didn’t he rail against Iraq and promise an end to foreign entanglements? That is the rhetoric. However, upon examining the record, the policies align: strong support for Israel, a tough stance toward Russia, and a willingness to project force abroad when credibility is at stake. In substance, Trump stands much closer to the neoconservative tradition than his “America First” slogans suggest.
The difference lies in the varnish. Neoconservatives insisted that America’s interventions were for the good of humanity. Trump insists they are for the good of America, full stop. That lack of moral varnish is what makes his foreign policy appear so unpredictable to analysts who listen to his isolationist talk while ignoring the neoconservative outcomes.
This raises a provocative possibility: Trump may be pioneering a new phase of American interventionism. Call it value-free neoconservatism. It keeps the hawkish policies but strips them of their missionary zeal. It abandons democracy promotion as a central project, recognizing how discredited it became in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, it leans into naked power politics. Interventions are justified because they show strength, secure allies, and prove America will not be humiliated.
For America’s allies, this shift can be disconcerting. They may welcome the support but feel unsettled by its transactional rationale. For adversaries, it is potentially more dangerous because it signals that American force might be wielded without even the fig leaf of moral justification. For Americans themselves, though, the bluntness can feel like a relief. After years of hearing leaders speak about democracy while delivering quagmires, a leader who says outright that power is about power may sound more believable.
The irony is that President Trump, who rose to power denouncing the architects of the Iraq War, has ended up embodying their worldview. He has kept their hawkish instincts while shedding their moral pretenses. In that sense, he is the purest neocon of all: a man who believes in using American strength to shape the world but does not bother pretending it is for anyone but for the benefit of the United States.
That may not make for inspiring rhetoric. It certainly does not make for comfort abroad. But in an era when Americans are deeply skeptical of foreign adventures, Trump’s stripped-down version of neoconservatism might be the only form that can survive politically. It is, in its own way, the most honest expression of what neoconservatism always was.
Clearly a case of self-defense, based on the numerous videos.
You would think Minneapolis’s leaders would do all they could to try to salvage their city’s riot-prone image in the wake of the George Floyd debacle. But you’d be wrong.
Here’s the latest idiocy coming out of what looks like a sad situation for a leftist woman lacking reasonable judgment around police operations, according to the New York Times:
A federal officer shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis during an immigration enforcement operation Wednesday, as the Trump administration intensified a crackdown on illegal immigration. Details of the shooting remained unclear, with conflicting accounts from local and federal officials.
Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in a statement that an agent had opened fire after a woman “weaponized her vehicle” in an attempt to kill federal officers. Mayor Jacob Frey called her account “bullshit” in a news conference, describing the shooting instead as “an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.”
Well, no, it was not bee ess, and anyone looking at the videos on X can clearly see that it looked like a protester ramming ICE agents in the course of their duties, using her car as a weapon, and an agent or agents firing back through the windshield, which can only be done from the front. To any reasonable observer, that’s self-defense, even as it led to an unfortunate ending for the leftist.
None of this has stopped the radical left, led by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, fromfrom over-reacting. Frey shrieked profanity at the television cameras to keep things whipped up.
Mayor Frey described the shooting as “an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying, getting killed.” He took issue with the federal government’s description of the shooting, describing it as “bullshit,” saying that he had viewed video of the incident.
He went toilet-mouth on national television, too:
It’s like he’s trying to whip up a riot, another burn-a-thon against Minneapolis’s ever-diminishing businesses for Gov. Tim Walz’s wife to open her windows to inhale.
As if that is in Minneapolis’s interest.
This isn’t leadership, it’s collaboration with leftists, rioters, and terrorists, and effectively calling on them to deliver more.
It’s highly probable that they will, looking to make themselves a new George Floyd as fraud hearings over Somali theft of billions in state and federal funding makes headlines.
And worse still, Frey was issuing de facto threats about people getting killed about a week ago, instead of doing all he could to tamp down the raging leftists.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents the area, preferred to go the liar’s route to this event, sounding like a mendacious left-wing lawyer:
A legal observer, she claimed, which suggests she probably knew these obstructors.
Ahem. Omar didn’t explain why the ‘legal observer’ was acting illegally. Any real legal observer knows not to interfere with lawmen as they go about their duties, let alone not try to ram anyone with a car.
But Omar’s got a mob to whip up, too, so the lies come easy.
Obviously, another disaster is in store for Minneapolis’s battered business owners. The rage-protests are already being set up, and Frey will cover himself by wanly calling on them to be peaceful, which knowing them, is unlikely to happen.
The left has the press on its side, but even that is a tattered weapon with all the X videos going around showing different sides of the ramming incident indicating self-defense.
Yes, it’s sad for the protestor, but these things inevitably happen, given that lawmen don’t know right off the bat if the person ramming them with their car and ignoring orders to stop is armed, a cartel leader, a human smuggler trying to escape justice, or a mere leftist trying to escape responsibility for reckless actions.
That doesn’t excuse Minneapolis leaders, truly among the worst in the country, for taking measures to ensure more rioting in their city from out-of-control leftists. They’ll get it, and then where will Minneapolis be?
President Trump has ridiculed Denmark’s dog sled teams in Greenland.
He has cited mysterious Chinese and Russian ships prowling off the coast.
He seems increasingly fixated on the idea that the United States should take over this gigantic icebound island, with one official saying the president wants to buy it and another suggesting that the United States could simply take it. Just a few days ago, Mr. Trump said: “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.”
But the question is: Does the United States even need to buy Greenland — or do something more drastic — to accomplish all of Mr. Trump’s goals?
Under a little-known Cold War agreement, the United States already enjoys sweeping military access in Greenland. Right now, the United States has one base in a very remote corner of the island. But the agreement allows it to “construct, install, maintain, and operate” military bases across Greenland, “house personnel” and “control landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements, and operation of ships, aircraft, and waterborne craft.”
It was signed in 1951 by the United States and Denmark, which colonized Greenland more than 300 years ago and still controls some of its affairs.
“The U.S. has such a free hand in Greenland that it can pretty much do what it wants,” said Mikkel Runge Olesen, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen.
“I have a very hard time seeing that the U.S. couldn’t get pretty much everything it wanted,” he said, adding, “if it just asked nicely.”
But buying Greenland — something that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers on Tuesday was Mr. Trump’s latest plan — is a different question.
Greenland does not want to be bought by anyone — especially not the United States. And Denmark does not have the authority to sell it, Dr. Olesen said.
“It is impossible,” he said.
In the past, Denmark would have been the decider. In 1946, it refused the Truman administration’s offer of $100 million in gold.
Today, things are different. Greenlanders now have the right to hold a referendum on independence and Danish officials have said it’s up to the island’s 57,000 inhabitants to decide their future. A poll last year found 85 percent of residents opposed the idea of an American takeover.
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has repeatedly scoffed at the idea of being bought, saying this past week, “Our country is not for sale.”
The relatively short, straightforward defense agreement between the United States and Denmark was updated in 2004 to include Greenland’s semiautonomous government, giving it a say in how American military operations might affect the local population. The roots of the agreement go back to a partnership forged during World War II.
At that time, Denmark was occupied by the Nazis. Its ambassador in Washington, cut off from Copenhagen, took it upon himself to strike a defense agreement for Greenland with the United States. (The island is part of North America, along the Arctic Ocean and close to Canada’s coast.)
A former American air base in Kangerlussuaq in western Greenland. Under a little-known Cold War agreement, the United States has sweeping military access in Greenland.
The fear was that Nazis could use Greenland as a steppingstone to America. The Germans had already established small meteorological bases on the island’s east coast and relayed information for battles in Europe. American troops eventually ousted them and established more than a dozen bases there with thousands of troops, landing strips and other military facilities.
After World War II, the United States continued to run some bases and a string of early warning radar sites. As the Cold War wound down, the United States closed all of them except one. It’s now called the Pittufik Space Base and helps track missiles crossing the North Pole.
The Danes have a light presence, too: a few hundred troops, including special forces that use dog sleds to conduct long-range patrols. In recent months, the Danish government has vowed to upgrade its bases and increase surveillance.
After American special forces captured Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, from a safehouse last week, Mr. Trump seemed emboldened. Stephen Miller, a top aide, then claimed that Greenland should belong to the United States and that “nobody’s going to fight the United States” over it. Danish and Greenlandic anxiety skyrocketed.
On Tuesday night, Danish and Greenlandic leaders asked to meet with Mr. Rubio, according to Greenland’s foreign minister. It’s not clear if or when that might happen.
Tensions between Mr. Trump and Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, have been steadily rising, as Mr. Trump pushes to “get” Greenland, as he puts it, while Ms. Frederiksen refuses to kowtow to him.
Just a few days ago, Ms. Frederiksen cited the 1951 agreement, saying, “We already have a defense agreement between the Kingdom and the United States today, which gives the United States wide access to Greenland.” She urged the United States “to stop the threats” and said an American attack on Greenland would mean the end of the international world order.
European leaders issued their own statement on Tuesday, also citing the 1951 agreement and saying, “Greenland belongs to its people.”
An American built, Cold War-era satellite station, referred to locally as Mickey Mouse, remains on a hill above Kangerlussuaq.Credit…Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
Analysts said that if the United States tried to use the defense pact as a fig leaf to send in a lot of troops and try to occupy Greenland, that wouldn’t be legal either.
According to the 2004 amendment, the United States is supposed to consult with Denmark and Greenland before it makes “any significant changes” in its military operations on the island. The 2004 amendment, which was signed by Gen. Colin L. Powell, who was then the secretary of state, explicitly recognizes Greenland as “an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark.”
Peter Ernstved Rasmussen, a Danish defense analyst, said that in practice, if American forces made reasonable requests, “the U.S. would always get a yes.”
“It is a courtesy formula,” he said. “If the U.S. wanted to act without asking, it could simply inform Denmark that it is building a base, an airfield or a port.”
That’s what infuriates longtime Danish political experts. If Mr. Trump wanted to beef up Greenland’s security right now, he could. But there has been no such official American request, said Jens Adser Sorensen, a former senior official in Denmark’s Parliament.
“Why don’t you use the mechanism of the defense agreement if you’re so worried about the security situation?” he said, adding: “The framework is there. It’s in place.”
But Greenland’s strategic location is not the only thing that has attracted Mr. Trump’s inner circle. The enormous island has another draw: critical minerals, loads of them, buried under the ice. Here, too, analysts say, the United States doesn’t need to take over the island to get them.
U.S. — The 2028 presidential race took a surprising turn this week following the events that took place in Venezuela, as the latest round of polling showed that deposed dictator Nicolas Maduro had taken the early primary lead as the most popular Democrat.
A poll of likely Democratic voters taken in the first week of January 2026 showed a dramatic shift in support from other popular candidates to Maduro, now that he has been relieved of his position as leader of the Venezuelan government and arrived in the United States.
“The voters obviously love him,” said one pollster. “Honestly, it shouldn’t surprise anyone. He has everything Democrats want in a politician: suppression of freedom, unbridled corruption, and straight-up socialism. Now that he’s residing in the U.S., he’s a shoo-in for the nomination. There’s already a campaign office set up for him, and ‘Maduro 2028′ signs are being printed as we speak.”
Democratic voters were quick to voice their support for Maduro. “He represents everything we stand for,” said one progressive American. “We’ve been waiting for a really good candidate like this ever since Obama left office. Maduro is like Obama on steroids. Oppression of dissent, killing opponents, torture chambers… this is the guy we need.”
CNN political analyst James Carville had already given Maduro his endorsement and all but named him the uncrowned Democratic frontrunner. “I wish he were a little bit more to the left, but I’ll take him,” Carville said on the air.
At publishing time, the Democratic Party had decided to continue its tradition of foregoing an actual primary and had named Maduro as its candidate.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers this week that President Donald Trump wants to acquire Greenland through a purchase rather than military action, as the administration revisits a long-standing proposal that has triggered sharp pushback from European allies and renewed debate over U.S. strategy in the Arctic.
Rubio delivered the remarks during a closed-door briefing on Monday with members of the armed services and foreign policy committees in both chambers of Congress, according to U.S. officials.
The briefing was focused primarily on Venezuela, but lawmakers raised questions about Trump’s intentions toward Greenland after recent comments by the president and senior adviser Stephen Miller.
The same day as the congressional briefing, Trump asked aides to provide an updated plan for acquiring Greenland, officials said. Trump has expressed interest in Greenland since his first term and has framed the issue as a national security priority tied to growing competition in the Arctic.
Greenland is a sparsely populated, resource-rich territory governed by Denmark, a NATO member, but it operates with broad autonomy over domestic affairs. Rubio did not outline what a purchase would entail or whether formal talks with Denmark have occurred.
On Tuesday, Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, joined leaders from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland in a joint statement rejecting Trump’s assertions that the United States should take control of Greenland.
The statement emphasized collective security through NATO and respect for national sovereignty.
“Security in the Arctic must therefore be achieved collectively, in conjunction with NATO allies including the United States, by upholding the principles of the U.N. Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders,” the leaders said. “These are universal principles, and we will not stop defending them.”
“Greenland belongs to its people,” the statement added. “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”
Later Tuesday, the White House said Trump had not ruled out military options.
President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region,” the statement said. “The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the commander in chief’s disposal.”
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that “Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.” While Russia and China have expanded Arctic activity, the United States maintains a long-standing military presence on Greenland, including Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base), visited last year by Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha.
Administration officials have also pointed to Greenland’s potential reserves of critical minerals as a strategic consideration.
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy identifies Western Hemisphere dominance as a top priority, a focus underscored by recent U.S. military actions in Venezuela and earlier remarks by Trump about Canada becoming the 51st state.
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
I can’t stop laughing at all the Democrats hyperventilating about President Trump’s Venezuela operation. I wish I could be more nuanced about this (and perhaps describe the potential pitfalls that lie ahead now that we have taken some “ownership” over the future welfare of the Venezuelan people), but when Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries (the so-called Democrat “leaders” in Congress) are fuming mad that America’s Delta Force dropped into the most heavily fortified compound in Venezuela like invisible ninjas and plucked murderous thug Nicolás Maduro from his slumberous solitude in a matter of minutes, I can barely resist the urge to stand on top of a chair positioned atop my desk and applaud all the remarkable warriors who accomplished this mission.
Consider how many tens of thousands of Venezuelans Maduro and his murderous predecessor, Hugo Chávez, “disappeared” over the years. Now take a moment to appreciate that an elite posse of American warriors operating on land, in the air, and on the sea blew up a temple honoring Chávez (that included his remains) and “disappeared” Maduro for good. If that’s not warrior poetry, I don’t know what else is.
A friend of American Thinker who goes by the online handle “Full Strength” made two excellent points in a previous comment thread: “ONE: Almost every man involved in this operation could have died had the operation failed…TWO: Every participant was critical. In a well coordinated operation the failure of almost any single element of the attack jeopardizes the entire operation.” The enlightened “Full Strength” is entirely correct.
The more details that come out about the “snatch and grab” mission in Caracas, the more incredible the whole mission becomes. On-the-ground spies and naval and aerial surveillance were flawless. The combat pilots hiding behind mountains before springing the attack all had nerves of steel — taking out enemy infrastructure, correctly positioning Delta Force operators for timely extraction, and successfully moving to positions of safety all while under heavy fire.
The Delta Force guys, well, there is no more elite warrior on the planet. Those impossible missions that Tom Cruise pulls off in the movies are ripped from the somewhat secret history of Delta Force’s most spectacular feats. I called them “ninjas” above because no word better describes their unique capabilities. Whether they want you dead or alive, you won’t see them coming. They are in and out before the bodies hit the floor.
I know I’m partisan, but what kind of red-blooded American could read the publicly available mission details and not shout, “Oh, hell yeah!” with a rolled-up fist in the air? What kind of real American doesn’t cheer when a murderous commie gets tossed in an American helicopter like a sack of potatoes? What kind of American could watch live footage of displaced Venezuelans (whose family members have likely been threatened, tortured, or murdered by the Chávez-Maduro regime) celebrating all over the world last weekend and not feel a pinprick of pride or hear a tiny voice gloating, “Yeah, my country did that”?
Apparently, the kind of American who doesn’t celebrate the capture of Maduro is the kind of American who votes for Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, and Zohran Mamdani. People who either identify as communists or proudly associate with communists (and, unfortunately, the Democrat Party is home to tens of millions of these idiots) are very unhappy that President Trump and Secretary of War Hegseth violated the sacred sovereignty of Venezuela.
Strangely, those same people never defend American sovereignty when South America’s club of dictators flood our country with drug runners, slavers, cartel butchers, criminals, and terrorists. For Democrat Party stalwarts, the territorial integrity of communist prisons posing as countries is sacrosanct, inviolable, and hermetically sealed. When the United States tries to protect its own borders, however, well, that’s racist.
Whatever else happens with Venezuela, now is the time to celebrate. Maduro is an evil dude who deserves much worse than he will receive. I would have been happy with inviting the families of everyone Maduro has murdered to an enormous football stadium, dropping off the commie you-know-what in midfield, and letting the crowd tear him to shreds. New York courts have been pretty poor examples of wise jurisprudence over the last fifteen or so years, but they are far better than anything the vile Maduro merits.
Besides, all the right nations are upset. Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Russia, China, Iran — every nation in the world that thumbs its nose at human rights has taken the time to write a sternly worded social media missive condemning the United States for…checks notes…dispatching an evil dictator who regularly tortured and murdered innocent civilians. Don’t we want those countries to be upset? If China, Cuba, and Iran were celebrating something President Trump had done, we would be in trouble. As it stands, I’d say rage-filled vituperation from some of the most tyrannical nation states in the world is high praise for any people who take pride in calling themselves “free.”
Some Estonian chick who calls herself the Vice-President of the European Commission made sure to announce on X — you know, the Elon Musk-owned platform that the Old World’s aristocrats are currently trying to censor and destroy — that the “EU is closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela.” Uhh…whatever, Kaja. We’ll let you know whether we need to call up a reserve of techno-fascist elites who hate free speech.
Isn’t that all Europe’s political class is capable of doing? To be a successful politician in Europe, you have to excel at writing morally indignant letters, censoring any opinions that the nanny-crats in Brussels don’t like, and opening national borders to invading, barbarian hordes. I’ll take Delta Force over bloated Brussels bureaucracy every day of the week. Besides, Europe hasn’t successfully invaded anything since peasants were forced to use “green” energy while dying from the plague. They are importers of invasion now; they export very little these days.
How to handle the Western Hemisphere shouldn’t be on Europe’s dance card. Most of us over here come from families who escaped the aristocratic tyrannies of Europe centuries ago. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers may have risked their lives to save Europe from fascism just so ungrateful lords could choose a rebranded (and World Economic Forum-endorsed) “globalist” fascism a few short decades later, but we don’t share the same Western values anymore. Eurocrat snobs have more in common with Chávez and Maduro than they do with Washington, Jefferson, or Madison.
Rather than worrying about how we sort things out on this side of the moat, it would be far better for the Brussels gang to figure out how not to commit continental suicide by inviting third-world rapists into their lands, depriving their own peoples of inherent freedoms, killing domestic industry with inane “green” energies, and cavalierly engaging in war with Russia.
Oh, more good news from the Venezuela operation: Both Iran’s “Supreme Leader” Ali Khamenei and Colombia’s communist terrorist-turned-el-presidenteGustavo Petro are freaking out about the possibility of the Delta ninjas sending them to Hell soon. The “ayatollah” is reportedly preparing to bug out to Moscow, and the diminutive “guerrilla” is hoping the Democrats in Congress will save his hide. Democrats do love protecting Islamic fundamentalists and communist murderers, so reaching out to Comrades Schumer and Jeffries probably is in both tyrants’ best interests.
Still, President Trump is in the White House, and he’s just so darn unpredictable. And the Delta ninjas are just so darn lethal. And the U.S. military’s “capture or kill” mission in Venezuela was just so darn successful. My guess is that anyone who has stupidly aligned himself with America’s enemies won’t be sleeping well for quite some time.
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THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 