Is MAGA coming for Greenland?

This is a Global Player Original Podcast. Hey guys, it's Shady Vance, the Vice President, and you know there was so much excitement around Usha's visit to Greenland this Friday that I decided that I didn't want her to have all that fun by herself, and so I'm gonna join her. I'm gonna visit some of our guardians. That is JD Vance talking about just going for the weekend as well to join his wife in Greenland because he doesn't want her to have all the fun by herself.

Accept that. J D Vance, Vice President, will arrive on Air Force two in a country where he hasn't been invited and where security will have to be provided for him at a time when America is saying we want Greenland for ourselves. So do they welcome him? Do they put security in place for this visit? Or do they start to wonder what on earth is going on? Feels pretty threatening from here. Welcome to the NewsAgency USA.

It's John. It's Emily. And what do you do when you have an uninvited guest turning up at your house? I didn't want you to come. I mean, you know, if you want to come, why don't you reach out and we'll try and organise it at a conv mutually convenient time. That is not what America is doing right now. It is saying, We're coming, we're taking it over.

And it really is quite something that it's going to be, in essence, an official visit. It's not just, hey, it's Usha and J D, we thought we'd drop in. Rydyn ni'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw. It's a big deal. Yeah, it's a provocative deal. And I have to say, thoughts and prayers actually to Ushavants, who thought she was going to Greenland on a sort of dog sleigh race recce, who suddenly finds that no, her husband's taken over this one.

Because one presumes Greenland is a very good way of diverting attention away from the story that we've been covering on the news agents this week, which is that bizarre TextLeak, the group chat that decided to bomb Yemen, that included the journalist and told him ahead of time everything that was gonna happen. So maybe Greenland just becomes this sort of proxy for

Look over there. I mean, literally, look over there. Look at Greenland right now. The dog sleigh race, we understand, has been cancelled. And the framing of this. Which is fascinating is that they're going to visit the US bases in Greenland because they think that Greenland needs protecting. It has come under threat.

in recent years, so they're going to protect this place that they want to take over? Just listen to JD Vance explaining the security issues for Greenland. A lot of other countries have threatened Greenland, have threatened to use its territories and its waterways to threaten the United States, to threaten Canada, and of course to threaten the people of Greenland. So we're gonna check out how things are going there. And I and I say that that speaking for President Trump,

We want to reinvigorate the security of the people of Greenland because we think it's important to protecting the security of the entire world. Unfortunately. Leaders in both America and in Denmark, I think, ignored Greenland for far too long. That's been bad for Greenland. It's also been bad for the security of the entire world. We think we can take things in a different direction.

So I'm gonna go check it out. So the White House has basically condemned decades of what they call neglect and inaction by Denmark. Denmark has called this Unacceptable pressure on Greenland, which the Prime Minister Meta Frederickson has vowed to resist. And I guess the people who are at the centre of this, the Greenlandic people, are now trying to work out

Is America coming for them? Like are they about to essentially be invaded or economically invaded by America? Can they get more concessions from Greenland at this point? And what about the whole question of independence? Do you really want to be independent of Greenland if you think that the next people coming for you are Trump and his MAGA gang? So I think it raises a whole load of questions for actually how Greenland is seeing itself now, its whole identity.

But you've got, as you say, this completely unsolicited, completely uninvited visit. Which they are having to provide security for. How do you provide bodyguards? How do you provide security for somebody who might be about to take over your country? Bizarre. In that you hear J D Vance there in that clip talking about how Greenland is under threat. Well who is it under threat from right now? Who do the Danes and the people who live in Greenland feel under threat from? Russia? No.

Other parts of Europe? No. It's the United States of America that is acting like the threat. What you have J.D. Vance saying there is what protection gangs do. And if you just give us The keys and the profit. It's what used to happen in the east side, the lower east side or south side of Chicago. This is gangland stuff, the way they are exerting their authority over Greenland. The Greenlanders have just had an election.

They're very happy with things as the way they are. Well, they're trying to form their coalition as we speak. So they are in a state of flux at the moment, trying to work out the shape of the next cabinet and the next parliament. But let's treat this intellectually, because J.D. Vance is an intellectual. He's a Yale guy. We're gonna be speaking to one of his former closest friends in a moment. But even the intellectual argument. that Greenland is under threat from Russia.

makes no sense when you've got Steve Witkoff, who at the weekend told us how much he loves Putin, how much he appreciates what Russia's doing. Russia and America are on the same page now. So when you hear the vice president Telling us that Greenland is under threat from unspecified sources, probably Russia. Why would we believe that? But Emily, it's more than that, isn't it? Going back to Steve Whitkoff and that extraordinary interview he gave to Tucker Carlson.

He talks about how Russia should have control of Luhans and the Donbass and everything else because referendums were held there and the people voted that they wanted to be with Russia. So you're accepting the free will of those people, but you're not accepting the free will of Greenlanders who've said they don't want to be part of the United States of America. They don't want to be a Guam or a fifty first state or whatever it happens to be.

And it just seems to be that there is an element of might is right and you have the potential the bizarre, unconscionable potential.

Of one NATO nation going up another over a piece of land. I mean, I do think there's an extent to which Greenland is just the naughty step right now, because if you look at the cast list, it was going to be Ushavant's going to see the dog slave. Now that's been cancelled. Vance is going alongside Mike Waltz. who you'll remember was the US national security advisor who actually invited in the journalist to the road group chat, Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic into the group chat.

And Chris Wright, the energy secretary, is joining them on Thursday. So it kind of looks like Trump, whilst never admitting that anything at all went wrong with the Let's Bot Yemen group chat. is trying to take the key principles.

And get them out of the way for a bit. Like maybe Waltz, don't say anything for a while, go to Greenland. Maybe JD Vance, don't say anything for a while, go to Greenland. I wonder if they're just trying to dead cat it. It's a really interesting theory. And the Trump administration, the Trump operation.

Of you're looking in one direction and they get you to look somewhere else. Normally the Mexican border, to be frank. Just a different border this way. But maybe there's an element of that. But nevertheless.

This is gonna scare the shit out of the Danes and Greenlanders of what the hell is the intention. And going back to my sort of probably stupid metaphor about this is gangland of saying, you know, we'd hate your pub to burn down, we'd hate your restaurant to burn down, we'd hate your shop to burn down. Donald Trump is sending his muscle.

He's sending the people whose knuckles drag along the pavement to say, You know what, you could do something much better here in Greenland. You can come with us and we'll give you the security that you need. There is no doubt that there is a strategic importance to Greenland and where it is situated between the Arctic and Atlantic and all the rest of it, that does matter.

And America does have interest there, and it's not the first time that America has expressed interest in taking over Greenland. This has history to it. But it is the manner in which it has been doing, it is the assertion Of I'm sorry at Denmark. We won it. We're gonna take it. Yeah. I'm gonna read you one comment from a Times reader. This is Stan Willis saying, coming to see the dog sled race.

Not so long ago we had visitors coming to see the Salisbury spire. We didn't believe them either. In other words, you've got UK citizens seeing Vance about to arrive in Greenland and attributing to him the same motives as Putin's thugs arriving in Salisbury with Novichark.

But let us go to what you raised, Emily, which is the idea that it's a diversion getting us to look the other way from the phenomenal national security breach. I think we should talk a bit more about that because Mike Waltz was put out on obviously uh Fox last night with Laura Ingraham to talk about what happened. And it was a really softball interview at the start. But his obfuscation and his inability to explain how he came to invite Geoffrey Goldberg onto this group chat.

Just riled, Ingraham, and it just became more and more threadbare that there is nothing to see here, which is clearly what. Magadam, the right wing Magadam media kind of landscape is trying to say, ugh, it's just a small thing. It is phenomenal and it is day three of this scandal going on. And Trump will be furious not so much at the leak, but the fact that people are laughing. and laughing uproariously at just how calamitous and stupid

And idiotic it was in the first place. There was one person in that group chat that understood the importance of national security. And it was the one guy who was not ever meant to be there. Now you can argue that A group chat isn't an ideal place to decide to bomb Yemen or anywhere in fact. It's not a great place to leave your military plans.

But the one person who showed responsibility, the one person who redacted vital information, the one person who was concerned about keeping America's armed forces safe. was the journalists who understood the gravitas of what he was hearing. None of the others did. They just used emojis. I mean they just used emojis. Well you had Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, up before the Intelligence Committee yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee, along with the head of the CIA.

This is one for the connoisseurs, but it was absolutely fabulous to watch her saying Yeah, it wasn't classified information, no. I mean because obviously it's Pete Hegeth who decides what's classified or not. In other words Don't look at me the bus. Come along. No, no, no. Just go Hegseth, get him before your committee, not us. Now the idea That putting on a group chat when an attack is going to take place with what munitions, hours before the attack.

That's not for the public domain. Of course that is confidential. Of course that is classified. We're going to launch a surprise attack in two hours with the following weapons from the following battle group. It's ridiculous. Of course it was confidential. Of course it was a national security breach. And to describe it as anything other is just hogwash. I mean the idea that you would put these messages onto a site where you know they will disappear.

Suggests that there is something more important than anything else to this administration, and it is lack of accountability. Rydw i'n ddw i'n ddw i'n ddw i'n ddw i'n ddw i'n ddw i'n ddw i'n ddw i'n ddw i'n ddw i'n ddw i'n ddw but they do not want to be held accountable. They do not want to be followed. There is no way of actually ever following up. What happened? I mean, can you imagine a world in which you would not document that seriously?

Seriously, you would not be putting that on somewhere where messages just simply disappeared. I think it tells you something about. How thick the Teflon coating Donald Trump thinks he has. Oh, I thought you were just gonna say how thick. No. That would be rude, Emily, and I'd never be rude about Donald Trump. Now I do think it shows that he believes that he can ride all this stuff out.

that it's not going to affect his popularity in any long term. And this goes back again to your point about the diversionary tactics. I'm not sure Greenland is diversionary tactics, but there'll be another fifteen stories by next week.

And we'll have forgotten about Jeffrey Goldberg. What was that story about the Atlantic? Yeah, they got hold of something. I don't think it does go away that quickly. I think it is such a piece of numbskullery that it will stick in people's minds of how stupid and ine.

They were in the whole thing. But I think Donald Trump thinks, you know what? We can circle the wagons, we can ride this one out, and the fire will be somewhere else in a few days' time. We move on. Yeah, and I would say to add to that. His polling numbers are not bad at the moment. They are going up. So he had a big dip shortly after inauguration in the weeks that followed. Everything that was happening at Doge was actually affecting a lot of real Americans' lives and jobs and livelihoods.

But in the last few days, we have seen his, as it were, the negative numbers start to get smaller. So he is technically rising, he's becoming more popular. in this month. Now it's too early to say whether something like that affects it. But if the top line is we bomb the Hooties, what don't you like about that? I don't think most Americans will think twice. We will be back in just a moment with a former close friend of the Vice President. The News Agents USA with Emily Major. And John Sopot.

So in the first half we've talked a lot about JD Vance, his visit to Greenland, what he's doing, what it represents. We're going to talk now a bit more about JD Van.

Because we're joined now by Sophia Nelson, who is a Detroit based public defender, but who was at Yale Law School with JD Vance. And Sophia, you and he were friends, weren't you? Uh yes, good afternoon. Thanks for having me. JD and I were in law school together and we became friends, yes. You were famously mentioned or part of the book you wrote, The Bestseller, Hill Billy Elogy.

and he referred to you in a way that, you know, he said you may or may not like as his progressive lesbian friend. In other words, he was, I guess, setting you up as somebody who had very different Values to him, but somebody who he was friends with still. And he went to his wedding and were sort of college mates, I guess. Is there still a friendship there between you? There there isn't. We lost touch in twenty twenty one when he started expressing

national views that I felt attacked my identity personally as a transgender person, uh, as well as the identities of people that I consider close to me, whether they be immigrants or other vulnerable communities in the United States. And I reached out to him about that and we had a falling out. We never shared a political ideology, and that's fine. I have many friends from different political backgrounds or different political beliefs.

But there has to be a foundation of mutual respect there that was certainly lost when he decided to tie himself to Donald Trump. Because in the early days of your friendship or around twenty sixteen You saw a man who was very critical of Donald Trump, very critical of the policies of that incoming administration. Do you understand?

What changed? What happened for him? I mean I know what he told me, uh, which rings hollow to me, what what seems to be the case is that there was no advancement politically for him without aligning himself with Donald Trump because you cannot be a successful Republican in the United States. sucking up to Donald Trump. And so he had to completely reverse himself and turn his back on a a lot of what I thought were our shared values of even if you disagree, you treat everyone with mutual respect.

Cruelty is not a part of politics. that when you share community with people, you demonstrate some base level of kindness. And I think that's been abandoned at every level of his public persona. That's so interesting what you say, Sophia,'cause I suppose the question it raises is Who do you think is the real JD Vance? Is the real JD Vance the one that you knew and were friends with? Or is the real J D Vance the one we see now who talks about childless cat ladies or whatever it happens to be?

in a way that you find so offensive and a lot of other people find quite disturbing. For me it's it's mostly sad and heartbreaking. But at some point you become who you're playing in public, right? Th you can only hold a cognitive distance between whatever values you might hold privately and who you're performing publicly. So who the JD Vance is at this point, I think we have to take him at his word. and who he tells us he is. So that that's kind of my take on that.

Sophia, can I just put it out there? People change. I mean, you know, here you've got a guy who came from nowhere, very difficult beginnings. was clearly ambitious, went to Yale Law School, is probably unapologetic about the fact that yeah, he wanted power, he wanted to change the world, he wanted to get into politics and he saw the route to do it. I mean, do you not have some sympathy in a way with somebody just kind of

finding the spot they want to get to and doing it. I have no problem with ambition or JD's ambition. In fact, I used to really encourage him to get involved in politics because I thought that even though we had different prescriptions for the problems we saw that he genuinely cared about um working class people from the Midwest where we both grew up. But

To say that people change, of course. We we change our opinions on things. We change a lot and we all should mature and change. But there's a difference between evolving and abandoning your values. And some core values that I was raised with have never changed and I to see him turn his back on those, whether it's mutual respect, kindness Give us an example. What what would you say are the values that he's abandoned? I mean where where would you sort of pinpoint

How that's happened, where that's happened. Respect, kindness, honesty, integrity. But I mean in terms of policies, was there something that he used to object to that he now loves? I mean was there something that you thought he was against that he'd now vote in favour of?

Where do you see the divergence coming in terms of who he is now? He was uh pro marriage equality. Now he's against it is is I think one clear example. Um he understood Donald Trump's rhetoric. Um to be very harmful uh to naturalized Americans and making them feel like they didn't belong in their own country. And now he espouses rhetoric even more cruel and dismissive. I mean, he's the origin of accusing Haitian immigrants of eating cats and dogs.

There was one moment though, wasn't there, where JD Vance adopts Catholicism and has ideologically kind of attached himself to a number of people sort of on this kind of post-liberal right. That want to actually fundamentally change America in terms of it being a separation between church and state. Yes. I think that's a really important thing that happened around twenty nineteen for him.

And when he became attached to the post-libel right and showed interest in that movement, converted to Catholicism, started showing a lot of admiration for Victor Orban, which I think we can all agree he's dramatically transformed Hungary and um Donald Trump and JD Vance see that as a model for how they want to transform the United States. And they've expressed that. But now that he's in power, you actually see him tacking towards even a different

arguably more radical group of technology authoritarians, whether that be Peter Thiel or Elon Musk or Curtis Yarvin. So he seems to shift wherever the center of power is at. at any given moment. So With the techno authoritarians, he has access to billions of dollars to advance his political career. So he's aligning himself with that, which is an austerity agenda very different.

From kind of the economic populism that he was espousing on the trail. And there's nothing about Elon Musk's agenda that's gonna help.

A laid off auto worker in Ohio. Just explain to me a techno authoritarian because I'm sure there'll be people here who are not familiar with what that means, what it involves. It's this political ideology that's become uh incredibly popular in Silicon Valley. They believe that there are exclusively white male geniuses. that have risen in tech that are better suited um to rule this country than anyone who might be elected. They want the government to be run like a startup, which, you know,

Move fast and break things, I think is kind of the idea and centralized power in a CEO type figure. Um, and so there's a intellectual on the techno-authoritarian right that's quite popular, named Curtis Yarvin. And he's actually re-calling for return of monarchy. So is there a clash now between the sort of Steve Bannon like figures, who do I think I mean, if you take the Nazi salute out of things for a moment, they do still fundamentally believe or espouse

economic populism. They don't believe that the world should belong to the techno nationalists. Is that fair? Yes. I mean I think Steve Bannon has been uh very clear on that, attacking Elon Musk and the techno authoritarians. you know, certainly it's hard to say setting the Naziism of it all aside a pretty big problem. That is something that I think techno authoritarians and the MAGA Steve Bannon wing share. But There is a big difference in their economic agenda.

The Steve Bannon wing has some shared ideas with Bernie Sanders and the idea that there needs to be a robust middle class. That is certainly not part of Elon Musk's agenda. I mean, Elon Musk went on Twitter and joked with Donald Trump about. firing people when they try to unionize. What is more economic populism than a union? So let let us go back to JD Vance now. Can you see him as The next US president.

Certainly that's what he wants. I I hope that's not our future, but I I hope that Donald Trump wouldn't get elected. Uh, and here we are. And Sophia, y I'm still struggling with something, which is you saying we should take him at his word when he says something and he is serious about it, whilst at the same time you are describing a chameleon who keeps changing his colours. Well so I think we should take him at that, right? Which is that there is no there there. There's a hollow, ambitious

person who is willing to adopt whatever ideology is necessary to advance their career. And that's when I talk about the lack of integrity. And I think that's deeply concerning because a hallmark of a leader is someone who is willing to have moral clarity even when maybe it's not popular.

Just before we let you go, Sophia, we've been talking about the Let's Bomb Yemen group chat along with the whole world this week. And one thing that you know, once you get over the kind of what the fuck moment about it You're down to the content of some of the messages. And it becomes quickly clear that JD Vance and Pete Heggs, to name but two, have very little respect for Europe. And I guess, you know, we're gonna have a lot of European listeners, UK listeners, trying to understand if JD Vance

always felt that way. I mean I remember the very first thing he said about the UK in Wisconsin when he was nominated as VP was, you know, it was the first it was the first Islamist Islamist nuclear state. Yeah, exactly. So I'm just wondering if you remember like, did he always hate Europe?

No, not at all. In fact, I remember how excited he was to go for the first time with Usha. So, no, this is part of his new political ideology. And it's a real shame because obviously the post-World War Two order to, you know, keep us all safe and avoid international conflict is incredibly beneficial to both the United States and Europe and to see it kind of fall apart in such a dismissive and Condescending way.

is is really disappointing. And it's not just Europe. I mean poor Canada. Yeah. That's next. I love that as an ending. It's a real shame. It's the understatement of the whole conversation. Yeah, I'm sorry by the way, as an American I It's not great to watch your world leaders um send emojis celebrating uh a bombing that whether however you feel about it, I'm sure there was innocent people lost and to just kind of have explosion.

fist American flag emojis feels very lacking the solemnity that you would hope from your leaders. Just to finish off, what do you think's going on in Greenland this week? He's sort of muscled in on his wife's trip there. Both uninvited as far as we can see. What is what does America kinda make you this? I have no idea what's I mean, it looks like uh the United States wants to make imperialism great again and I'm not sure there's an appetite for that anywhere in the world. Certainly not.

Sophia Nelson, thank you. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much.

Newsagents USA with Emily Maitless and John Sopel. What you're doing here in Tucson impacts not only Arizona, the whole Yeah. And what people are doing. Don't we have to- Say yes. That was Bernie Sanders. He's on tour. with AOC and they have been doing an anti-oligarch tour of of all places Nevada, but lots of places in the southwest, places that you don't naturally expect Bernie Sanders to pop up. And I guess this is part of the fight back.

Because everyone is asking the same question at the moment, what are the Democrats doing? Are they gonna lie down, play dead, get run over, or are they gonna go out on the stump and do it? And I think Bernie's one of the few voices who, frankly, has been saying the same thing for the last forty years, but is saying it with increasing urgency today in a way that is actually

probably quite welcome amongst those people who would naturally vote Democrat who feel that their own party is now letting them down. Look, we know that Bernie Sanders is a formidable campaigner. He's good on the stump. He does attract huge amounts of support from a lot of young people when he does all this stuff. AOC is obviously of a very different generation To Sanders. Sanders is an old man now. Creeping up to an age at which she might herself be considering a presidential run. Exactly.

But is the Democratic Party going to really counter the popularity of Trump from the left? It's a really open question. I still think that we're waiting to see emerge a central figure that the Democratic Party can get behind. You know, if you think of the template of British politics, you have a leader of the opposition. However crap, you've at least got a focal point.

The Democrats do not have a focal point. They're still floundering after the election defeat, trying to work out some of the terrible maths and terrible m kind of metrics that came out. from that election and what to do next and how to fight Trump. And the figures that that most people will have heard of

have been around for a long time. Whether it's Bernie Sanders, whether it's Nancy Pelosi, whether it's Chuck Schumer, they're all now people in their seventies, dare I say, eighties. Eighties, yeah. Right? And so we're now looking to see who is going to start to emerge. One of the people I've been looking at over the last few weeks is John Ossoff, who is the Georgia Senator.

And very young, 37, has been very powerful in the places that he's hit back. Most recently, on the whole, Let's Bomb Yemen group chat. And previously to that, in terms of how they have to deal with Trump trying to shut down Congress. And I would say he's won I mean, whenever I say something like this I jinx their career forever. So, you know, sorry James Cleverly and all the rest of it. But

He would be my person to watch. You like who? Andy Bashir? Andy Bashir in Kentucky. Kentucky Governor. Yeah, there are a few Jared Polis in Colorado, the governor there, he's he's a very articulate spokesperson. There are a few people who are mayors as well in certain places. who you could see coming through and doing really well too. So look, there is just a lack of sense of organization of drive behind any No there hasn't been this support

Coalescing behind anyone at the moment. And I still think that the Democratic Party as a source of opposition to Donald Trump right now, it is negligible. It is virtually non-existent. We'll be back next week. We'll see you then. Bye bye. Bye. A Global Player Original Podcast. Uh, yeah.