How Trump Brought Us to a “Rupture in the World Order”

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Washington, News, Politics, President, Wickenden, Wnyc, Barack, Obama, Lizza

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

The Washington Roundtable discusses President Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland and his subsequent retreat. At Davos this week, the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, characterized the episode as “a rupture in the world order.” To analyze how Trump’s rhetoric has heightened concerns about the durability of the transatlantic alliance, the Roundtable is joined by Carl Bildt, the co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and the former Prime Minister of Sweden. “I think what we need to do as Europeans is to do our own thing,” Bildt says. “We now have a United States that, from our point of view, is unpredictable.”

This week’s reading:

“It’s Time to Talk About Donald Trump’s Logorrhea,” by Susan B. Glasser
“An Unhappy Anniversary: Trump’s Year in Office,” by Amy Davidson Sorkin
“The Overlooked Deaths of the Attack on Venezuela,” by Oriana van Praag
“The Ice Curtain,” by Ian Frazier
“How Europe Can Respond to Trump’s Greenland Imperialism,” by Isaac Chotiner
“The Congresswoman Criminalized for Visiting ICE Detainees,” by Jonathan Blitzer

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the political scene from The New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics.
0:11.0	I'm Evan Osnos, and I'm joined as ever by my colleagues Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser.
0:16.0	Good morning, Jane, and good morning Susan.
0:18.0	Hey, Evan.
0:19.0	Hey there, great to be with you.
0:32.2	Well, this just may be remembered as the week when some big American allies stopped pretending to get along with Donald Trump.
0:34.6	In barely 100 hours, he swung from threatening to get Greenland and fight NATO
0:40.2	to backing down, at least temporarily. So what's the net effect? Well, a European Union diplomat
0:48.1	put it memorably to Politico, quote, Our American Dream is dead, adding Donald Trump murdered it. That's quite an image from a diplomat.
0:59.4	So Jane, Susan, what happened here for people who didn't follow every twist and turn?
1:03.9	Well, as we know, Trump has been fixated on Greenland, a Danish territory, and Denmark is a NATO ally, and he's threatened to seize
1:13.6	Greenland and imposed tariffs on Denmark. And on Wednesday, Trump pulled back, claiming he and
1:19.9	NATO reached a framework for a deal. Framework being a very broad. Doing a lot of work. Doing a lot of work here.
1:27.8	A concept of a plan?
1:29.3	An idea.
1:30.1	Yeah, right.
1:30.6	What was that?
1:31.3	That was the way said.
1:32.2	The concepts of a plan.
1:33.4	Yeah. with some wacky scheme or another, you know, we're 10 years into that. But this did feel to me like something different happened this week.
1:49.2	And having the president go to Switzerland where all the world leaders are gathered,
1:55.2	the CEOs and essentially treat Europe like hostile territory.
	...

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