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What Next

Emperor Trump Wants Greenland

What Next

Slate Podcasts

News Commentary, Daily News, News

4.62.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is Trump genuinely interested in expanding America’s borders or is this all just to further their mission of “looking tough online”? For the people surprised to suddenly find themselves on America’s bad side, does it matter? 


Guest: Jonathan M. Katz, journalist and the author of Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire and author of theracket.news newsletter.


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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I gotta tell you, a week after the U.S. government went into Venezuela to arrest its president and try to take over the country, I did not expect the conversation to have shifted so dramatically. From what happens now to who are we invading next?

0:24.9

We need Greenland for national security.

0:28.1

If you were watching cable news last week, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that Greenland

0:33.5

is next on the administration's wish list.

0:36.2

We need it for national security. We have to have it.

0:39.9

Even before the Delta Force was wheels up in Caracas, the administration was steadily trying

0:45.2

to shift the Overton window on the whole Greenland idea, one news clip at a time.

0:51.0

Greenland, there's a U.S. intent to buy Greenland. Can you clarify your comments to lawmakers this week?

0:55.8

Well, that's always been the president's intent from the very beginning. He said it very early on.

0:59.5

I mean, this is not new. He talked about it in his first time. But while this left me,

1:04.7

scratching my head, that is not how it hit journalist Jonathan Katz.

1:09.2

It doesn't surprise me because that's how this administration operates.

1:14.7

It's just whatever feels good to them is what they're going to go for.

1:19.7

And if they get blowback, then they back off.

1:22.5

That tends to be how they operate.

1:25.0

Yeah, I mean, this Greenland conversation, it was at least partially

1:28.0

kicked off by Katie Miller, Stephen Miller's wife, who got on X and posted like a map of

1:35.6

Greenland covered in the U.S. flag with the words soon in all caps. Almost like a stay tuned

1:43.3

for this one moment.

1:46.0

I mean, that did surprise me.

1:48.5

I mean, again, but that kind of goes back to the thesis that this is all,

1:52.7

that this is an administration entirely of posters and that they do everything based on posts.

...

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