Trump’s Year-One Rhetoric Fuels Greenland and Tariff Tensions (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: President Trump marked his first full year back in office with a lot of comments. There was a statement to the press in which he was rather braggadocious.

[00:00:09] Speaker 2: We have a book that I'm not going to read to you, but these are the accomplishments of what we've produced.

[00:00:17] Speaker 1: And he also made some rather unsettling claims. How far are you willing to go to acquire green? You'll find out. Then there were multiple truth social posts throughout the night. Around midnight, he left Florida where he saw the college football championship between Miami and Indiana. And he started posting at 12.26 a.m. something about his conversation with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. But then he started after that sharing private text or WhatsApp messages or signal messages he was getting from world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, who said to the president he didn't understand what he was doing with this talk of seizing Greenland. And that was followed by posting these two images, fake obviously, of the president planting a flag in Greenland with Secretary of State Rubio and Vice President Fance. And then another one of him with a giant map of the Western Hemisphere in which the U.S. controls not just Greenland, but Canada, Venezuela, and Cuba. That late night rant ended at about 1.53 a.m. Later in the day, at around 1.48 p.m., the president held that press conference. He started the press conference by discussing how big the crowd was there in the press briefing room. And also showing pictures of dangerous individuals, undocumented immigrants that he said had been picked up in Minnesota in the previous few months.

[00:01:54] Speaker 2: Boy, these are rough characters.

[00:01:56] Speaker 1: Next, he was on to his list of 365 accomplishments, which he said were all great accomplishments. He also seemed to hurt himself on the paperclip.

[00:02:04] Speaker 2: Here's the book on accomplishments. And this is something... Oh, I'm glad my finger wasn't in that sucker. That could have done some damage, but you know what? I wouldn't have shown the pain.

[00:02:16] Speaker 1: He also said that he didn't seem to care much about the Nobel Peace Prize, although there was another post over the weekend where he seemed to suggest his attempt to grab Greenland was rooted in his failure to get the Nobel Peace Prize. How would you, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, improve the lives of average, everyday Americans? Why is this prize so important?

[00:02:35] Speaker 2: It wouldn't improve the lives of any...

[00:02:38] Speaker 1: And then, of course, asked what happens if the U.S. Supreme Court says that his tariffs aren't legal? What's he going to do then? Can he still force the Europeans to side with him, even without his threats of a 10% to 25% tariff on this country? Well, he said they had a plan B.

[00:02:55] Speaker 2: Take a look at the word license. Take a look at other things. I mean, we have other alternatives. But what we're doing now is the best, the strongest, the fastest, the easiest, the least complicated.

[00:03:07] Speaker 1: As the president now enters his second year of his second term, we're left to wonder what exactly this aggressive stance towards our European allies is going to result in, in terms of prices, which is one of the reasons why the president was elected, and in terms of world diplomacy, and the president's desire to bring peace to the world. That's going to be a tough, tough thing to achieve if we don't have many allies in our corner.