What did Donald Trump do today?
He got called out on a lie or hallucination about Greenland in real time.
In an abrupt but not particularly surprising twist, Trump appeared to back down on his threats to invade NATO ally Greenland today. More accurately, he kept up his threat that Greenland would, necessarily, become part of the United States. But he ruled out using military force, the only means by which that could happen, since both Greenland and its parent country Denmark have flatly rejected Trump's "offers" with respect to the territory.
In what may have been an attempt to square that circle, Trump posted to his private microblogging service that he'd agreed on a "framework of a future deal" with Mark Rutte, the Secretary-General of NATO. Immediately pressed for details, Trump evaded the question by saying "it's a little bit complex" but that he'd explain at some unspecified point in the future.
There are two problems with Trump's story. First, NATO has no authority to make deals on behalf of one of its member states. Rutte could no more agree to give Greenland to the United States than he could give Florida to Denmark.
That leads to the second problem: Rutte denies that any such discussion about Greenland ever took place.
Being caught in an easily disproved lie is nothing new for Trump, but it raises the question of why Trump has finally backed down, at least momentarily, from the absurd prospect of boosting the United States' "national security" by starting a war with the rest of NATO. One possibility is that he began to fear—probably correctly—that the U.S. military would simply refuse to follow any such order. While the subordination of American military forces to the President is normally absolute, there's precedent: during the lame duck period of Trump's first term, Congressional leaders sought and received assurances from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the military would not assist him in a coup attempt or suicidal nuclear attack.
Alternatively, in the face of virtually unanimous public opinion against any such invasion and a united European front, Trump may have been trying to save face by claiming a "deal" that will never exist. If so, it doesn't seem to be working.
Finally, Trump may have said that he had a nonexistent conversation with a Dutch military bureaucrat about ceding an independent Danish territory because he genuinely believed he had. It wasn't the only time Trump got confused about which country was which: during his shambling address to the World Economic Forum today at Davos, he repeatedly confused Greenland with Iceland.
Why does this matter?
- There's no practical difference between a president who won't tell the truth and who doesn't have any idea what the truth is.
- Just because someone can be distracted, scared or shamed off of an incredibly stupid course of action doesn't mean it wasn't an incredibly stupid course of action to pursue in the first place.