On Wednesday morning, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough didn’t mince words about Donald Trump‘s escalating fixation on acquiring Greenland.
He called it what it is: insane. And then he explained, slowly and deliberately, why abandoning America’s post-World War II alliance system for 19th-century territorial conquest represents a catastrophic strategic blunder that would undermine everything that made America great.
The “Morning Joe” host delivered an expletive-laden rant about the president’s ongoing threat to annex Greenland, by force if necessary. https://t.co/VJuhbs4PZr
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“No, it’s not an option unless you are absolutely insane,” Scarborough said, responding to White House officials who’ve suggested acquiring Greenland remains a hypothetical option on the table.
“Unless you want to turn your back on what the United States of America has been doing since 1945, which has created, let me say this again for idiots out there that say, ‘Oh, well, America’s been suckers’—no, no, everything we’ve set up; the world order that we set up starting in 1947, led to the American century, led to American dominance, led to America’s military by and far being the strongest military in the history of mankind,” he added.
Scarborough’s frustration was palpable as he laid out the economic and strategic case for why Trump’s Greenland gambit would be suicidal for American interests. The United States has a GDP of roughly $25 to $27 trillion. Europe’s combined GDP hovers around $23 to $25 trillion. Russia’s is approximately $1.4 trillion.
The “Morning Joe” host delivered an expletive-laden rant about the president’s ongoing threat to annex Greenland, by force if necessary. https://t.co/bXldKooJ0U
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When America stands aligned with its NATO allies, it commands unmatched economic and military power. That alliance—forged in the ashes of Nazi Germany and tested against Soviet communism—is the foundation of American dominance.
“That world order begins to crumble piece by piece by piece when you start undermining the NATO alliance by talking about invading a NATO ally,” Scarborough explained.
He was particularly scathing about the casual way Trump and his advisors have floated the idea of using military force to seize Greenland, a Danish territory and NATO member. “Maybe, maybe they’re playing with coloring books before they say things like this,” he said sarcastically.
What makes Trump’s obsession particularly infuriating to Scarborough is the timing. While the president is fantasizing about acquiring Arctic territory and Venezuelan oil, China is methodically outmaneuvering the United States across every domain that actually matters: military capabilities, economic influence, and diplomatic reach.
“We’re talking about Venezuela, when China is eating our lunch across the globe,” Scarborough noted. “We’re talking about Greenland when China is eating our lunch across the globe. We’re talking about all of these 19th century pursuits when China is rushing headfirst into the 21st century race militarily, economically, diplomatically.”
Scarborough’s broader argument is that Trump doesn’t understand—or doesn’t care—that American power in the modern world isn’t derived from territorial expansion. It comes from the alliance system, from soft power, from the credibility that comes from honoring commitments to friends and partners.
Every time Trump threatens a NATO ally or suggests the United States might unilaterally seize territory, he erodes that credibility and weakens the very system that made America the world’s dominant superpower.
These billionaires advising Trump, Scarborough suggested, have become intoxicated by their own wealth and disconnected from how the world actually works.
“These are the same billionaires that are billionaires because of the world order that we created in this country post-1945,” he said pointedly. They’re beneficiaries of the system they want to destroy.
Scarborough’s warning goes beyond party politics or cable news theatrics. He’s articulating a genuine strategic concern shared by military strategists and foreign policy experts across the political spectrum: that Trump’s impulses toward territorial conquest and alliance-breaking are fundamentally misaligned with 21st-century geopolitical reality.
The threats facing America aren’t in the Arctic or the Caribbean. They’re in the Indo-Pacific, where China is rapidly modernizing its military and consolidating economic dominance.
By chasing fantasies about Greenland and Venezuela, Trump is distracted from the actual challenge that will define the next decade: competition with China. And by destabilizing NATO in the process, he’s removing America’s most powerful tool for meeting that challenge.
