One year after President Donald Trump took the oath of office for the second time, his fragile ego and blatant refusal to follow the laws of the United States has destroyed the safety and security Americans once held.
Rather than reflecting on how he could improve his abysmal approval rating, Trump instead spent the days leading up to his one-year anniversary in office doubling down on his least popular policies, threatening heightened tariffs against countries opposed to his imperialist desires.
For example, he threatened many of the United States’ NATO allies with absurdly high tariffs as a punishment for not supporting his preposterous demand that Denmark fork over Greenland to the United States.
In other words, Trump plans to raise prices for Americans—on everything from pharmaceuticals to cars and machinery—in order to accomplish a goal that few support in the first place.
A new CBS News/YouGov poll found just 30% of Americans approve of Trump's desire to buy Greenland. An even smaller 14% would support Trump using military force to take the arctic territory—a move Trump refused to rule out in an interview with NBC News.
In the immediate term, Trump's ridiculous tariff threat has once again sent the stock market spiraling. Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ fell more than 1% when markets opened on Tuesday.
The threats have also caused the dollar to tumble and bond yields to rise as investors flee the United States. This is expected to spike inflation since it will be more expensive for the United States Treasury to borrow money.
"When it becomes more costly for the government to borrow, it also gets more costly for firms and households to borrow," Joseph Steinberg, an economics professor at the University of Toronto, told PBS News last April, when the financial markets were in a similar state of turmoil because of Trump’s tariffs.
But that wasn't all Trump did this past weekend.
He also unveiled his own corrupt version of the United Nations, in which he will supposedly charge countries $1 billion to join his "Board of Peace," which seems to be an expanded version of the Gaza Board of Peace he proposed during ceasefire negotiations last year. Trump will serve as the chair.
Countries are signaling they won’t join Trump's Dr. Evil-esque board, which has set off Dear Leader.
People walk on a street in Nuuk, Greenland, on Jan. 14.
For example, after France said it doesn’t intend to join, Trump threatened to put a 200%—yes, 200%—tariff on French wine. Trump also publicly posted apparent text messages between himself and French President Emmanuel Macron in which Macron told Trump he doesn't understand what Trump is trying to do with Greenland. You and me both, Emmanuel.
Sicker yet is that this is all the consequence of Trump's fragile ego.
Trump is enraged that he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize, the medal for which he now holds in his possession as a sad little consolation prize after this year’s actual winner gave the medal to him in an effort to curry favor.
In a batshit-crazy text message to the Norwegian prime minister—who has nothing to do with the Nobel Peace Prize, aside from leading the award committee’s home country—Trump said that because he didn't win the Nobel, he now is no longer solely thinking about peace and instead about how to conquer more parts of the world.
Trump wrote to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre:
Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT
Democrats are aghast at Trump’s behavior over the weekend.
“This is the behavior of a mad king or a toddler, not a U.S. President,” Rep. Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, wrote in a post on X. “Trump’s bizarre and erratic behavior is making us less safe and it’s long past time for Republicans in Congress to stand up to him. This dangerous stupidity has to stop.”
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
But given that Republicans in Congress—who hold a majority and therefore the power to actually do something about the horrors unfolding—are a bunch of cowards, it’s unlikely Trump will be reined in.
The only Republicans who spoke out about Trump’s sick behavior are ones who have already been vocal against him.
For example, Sen. Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who is retiring and thus has nothing to lose, said Trump’s tariff threats are idiotic.
"This response to our own allies for sending a small number of troops to Greenland for training is bad for America, bad for American businesses, and bad for America's allies," Tillis wrote in a post on X.
The rest, however, are spending their Tuesday celebrating Trump’s first year in office and declaring that he has fixed the country.
That would be news to the majority of Americans, a plurality of whom give Trump’s first year an “F” grade, according to a Navigator Research poll released Tuesday.
