How the Free World Can Fight Mad King Trump

[Celerity]

The worst president in American history wants to conquer Greenland.

https://prospect.org/2026/01/21/trump-greenland-canada-venezuela-nato-democracy/


People protest President Trump’s policy toward Greenland in front of the U.S. consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, January 17, 2026. Credit: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo

Donald Trump is back on his bullshit. After seemingly forgetting about it for several months, he is now once again demanding to conquer Greenland, and potentially also Canada. He is, at least, straightforwardly clear about the motivations for such a patently insane act: his personal feelings. “Ownership is very important,” he told The New York Times. “That’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do with, you’re talking about a lease or a treaty.” As someone who has, alas, spent a disturbingly large fraction of my professional career observing and writing about Donald Trump, I have some comradely advice for the forces of freedom and democracy around the world: Stand up to him. It’s not a guarantee of success, but like all idiot bullies, Trump only respects strength and aggression, and at bottom he’s also a coward. Appeasement will only lead to him coming back for a second helping.

An important political background is that there is no real domestic constituency for conquering Greenland or Canada (or for Trump’s brain-dead trade war for that matter), among either the capitalist class or the public. Even Republicans are overwhelmingly against acts of war on a NATO ally. These are purely the deranged whims of a senile madman. Trump has returned to power in large part because the American elite is stupid, corrupt, and morally rotten to its very marrow. Preventing this was objectively in the interest of American business, but they either failed to mobilize behind his opponent or, driven mad themselves by social media and right-wing group chats, actively helped him. For a decade now, a critical mass of elites have made an implicit bet that they would not suffer personally from appeasing and enabling Trump, and for a decade they have been correct.

Punish Trump-supporting billionaires, above all Elon Musk. The oligarchs aligned behind Trump are likely the softest and ripest target for an EU self-defense effort. Individuals like Musk, Larry and David Ellison, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Charles Kushner, and so on should be subject to targeted sanctions: banned from travel to democratic countries, their companies limited or forbidden from operating in democratic jurisdictions, and any property subject to relevant law seized—like the many companies headquartered in Ireland for tax avoidance reasons, or Tesla’s gigafactory in Berlin. In particular, Musk’s Twitter/X should be banned immediately in every democracy, on whatever grounds you can cook up.

This would deal a heavy blow both inside America and out to the coordination forum for the global fascist movement.. It would also stop Musk from inciting race riots in countries like Britain. Luckily, his company has been in egregious violation of laws against the creation, possession, or distribution of child pornography and revenge porn that exist in most countries. The company has claimed it has stopped this, but as of last week it was not true. Ban X and Grok and ideally charge Musk with a separate count of child endangerment for every underage girl his chatbot undressed. For a reach goal, it shouldn’t be that difficult to collapse Musk’s entire business empire. Every part of it is preposterously overvalued, and the core of it, Tesla, is in severe decline. Start pulling out bricks from the Jenga tower wherever you can. Banning Starlink, Tesla, and Twitter/X from the EU might just do it.

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