Speaker 1: And hello, how are you happy? Wednesday? Today?
Speaker 2: It's the twenty first day of January, year of Our
Speaker 2: Lord twenty twenty six monument Tom Sullivan. And I'm not
Speaker 2: quite sure how to put this together. If we do
Speaker 2: it in chronological order, We're starting with this morning. I'm
Speaker 2: working our way through the day. But the news about Greenland,
Speaker 2: the big Davos meeting is going. Like I said, usually
Speaker 2: Davos is a big board. It's a playground for a
Speaker 2: bunch of CEOs and so forth and political leaders and
Speaker 2: they go to Davos and they.
Speaker 1: But this time.
Speaker 2: It's all shaken up. It's all shaken up by President
Speaker 2: Trump wanting to get Greenland and NATO and Europe, and
Speaker 2: everybody is mad at each other and they're all in this.
Speaker 2: They're all coming together in Davos. And well, it started
Speaker 2: off one direction, and the President gave a speech this morning.
Speaker 2: By the way, on the way to Europe last night
Speaker 2: he left Andrews Air Force Base on the Air Force one,
Speaker 2: the seven forty seven, and it had electrical problems and
Speaker 2: apparently the plane went dark on their way, so the
Speaker 2: pilots turned it around brought it back. President was late,
Speaker 2: but he got on the backup plane and wound up
Speaker 2: in Davos a little bit late this morning. But so
Speaker 2: he gets there and the first thing he's got to
Speaker 2: do is they's scheduled to give a speech to the
Speaker 2: assembled leaders and a lot of them are European leaders
Speaker 2: and NATO leaders and members of NATO. And while the president,
Speaker 2: somebody talked to him and he backed off immediately in
Speaker 2: this speech right out of the gate about he's not
Speaker 2: thinking about using military force.
Speaker 3: People thought I would use force. I don't have to
Speaker 3: use force. I don't want to use force. I won't
Speaker 3: use force.
Speaker 4: All we're asking for is to get greenland, including right title.
Speaker 3: And ownership, because you need the ownership to defend it.
Speaker 3: You can't defend it on a lease number one legally
Speaker 3: is not defensible that way.
Speaker 2: So everybody was signed a little bit of relief from
Speaker 2: Wall Street jumped up on the news that he said
Speaker 2: I'm not going to use force. But he did go
Speaker 2: through in his speech. It was about an hour and
Speaker 2: a half long, and then he took some questions after that,
Speaker 2: so it was quite a deal, but it looked like
Speaker 2: he was looking for an off ramp to back off
Speaker 2: of his I'm going to get Greenland no matter what.
Speaker 2: And besides that, I mean, President can't do that, you know, latterly,
Speaker 2: you've got to have Congress.
Speaker 1: I mean, all the various things.
Speaker 2: That we have bought over the years that we've always
Speaker 2: had Congress involved in every single one of those. But
Speaker 2: he went after, he went after Europe in general, calling
Speaker 2: them basically insulting them. He did call out and was
Speaker 2: they said later he was very rude. But Mark Carney,
Speaker 2: the head of Canada, and Maccrone Emanuel Macrone, the head
Speaker 2: of France, and he went after the Premier of Switzerland.
Speaker 2: So he's a lot of our allies. And the reaction was,
Speaker 2: even though he said I'm not going to use force,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of shock in that room, a
Speaker 2: lot of shock. So Rebecca Heinrich, who is a national
Speaker 2: security analyst, weighed in with this.
Speaker 5: President Trump goes back and forth between talking about how
Speaker 5: he wants Europe to be strong and then criticizing, of course,
Speaker 5: the Europeans for not spending enough on NATO, talking about
Speaker 5: making that he has led NATO to get stronger, and
Speaker 5: then criticizing the fact that Americans don't get much out
Speaker 5: of NATO. And if I can pull those things together
Speaker 5: in a way I think for our viewers that makes
Speaker 5: a lot of sense, which is that NATO is great
Speaker 5: for the United States when it's strong, because Europe is
Speaker 5: still our largest trading partner. I think last year it
Speaker 5: was something like Europe had one point six trillion dollars
Speaker 5: of American imports and they invested half of foreign direct investments,
Speaker 5: which means American jobs and prosperity here at home. So
Speaker 5: President Trump is urging Europeans to stop, you know. He
Speaker 5: criticized Germany under Merkel for getting rid of nuclear energy
Speaker 5: and praised the current German Chancellor Mertz for moving away
Speaker 5: from that again. And then, of course on Greenland, I
Speaker 5: really appreciated President Trump disabusing anybody of this notion that
Speaker 5: the United States would even consider military force against this
Speaker 5: great ally of the United States, and he moved the
Speaker 5: conversation back into the category of the United States needing
Speaker 5: to strengthen the security of Greenland. For NATO, it's good
Speaker 5: for the United States and Americans, and we have a
Speaker 5: treaty that already allows us to expand our forces there,
Speaker 5: and the Danes are willing to collaborate. So my hope,
Speaker 5: based on the President's remarks today is that we're moving
Speaker 5: back into more productive negotiations within the context of the
Speaker 5: NATO alliance.
Speaker 1: Well that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: So as the day went on, the President had meetings
Speaker 2: with a number of world leaders that were there, and
Speaker 2: that everybody started talking about maybe some sort of negotiation.
Speaker 2: Nathan Sales is a Farmer Ambassador at Large on counter
Speaker 2: terrorism in the first Trump administration, and this is how
Speaker 2: he saw what was going on.
Speaker 6: Well, Harris, I think that's the big takeaway, and it's
Speaker 6: an important message. Greenland is important to the United States
Speaker 6: international security, but there's a question of ends and the
Speaker 6: question of means, and we want to increase our presence there,
Speaker 6: but we want to do that in a way that
Speaker 6: doesn't needlessly antagonize our allies and doesn't cause major problems
Speaker 6: long term for the United States. So I think it
Speaker 6: was a welcome message for the President to take military
Speaker 6: force off the table. I think what's going to happen
Speaker 6: going forward. It's not clear that the Europeans are prepared
Speaker 6: to negotiate over Greenland's future, So let's see what happens
Speaker 6: in these side meetings in Davos. This matters to the
Speaker 6: United States, but Europe gets a vote, Denmark gets a voute,
Speaker 6: Greenland gets a vote. So let's stay tuned and see
Speaker 6: how these talks.
Speaker 1: And the talks went on.
Speaker 2: Like we said earlier, a president went from meeting to
Speaker 2: meeting to meeting with all these various heads of state.
Speaker 2: So Nathan Sales says, yeah, negotiations was needed and it
Speaker 2: could work out for the US down the road.
Speaker 6: We have conducted transactions like this in the past that
Speaker 6: have proven to be enormously beneficial to the United States
Speaker 6: over the long run. And you know, William Seward, Secretary
Speaker 6: of State, who orchestrated the purchase of Alaska from Russia,
Speaker 6: also was very interested in trying to acquire Greenland around
Speaker 6: the same time and ultimately was not successful in doing so.
Speaker 6: But the key difference between those transactions and today it
Speaker 6: takes two to tango. There has to be a party
Speaker 6: on the other side of the table that's willing to say,
Speaker 6: you know what, yes, we're prepared to sell this asset
Speaker 6: to you in exchange for money. And right now Greenland
Speaker 6: is saying no and Denmark is saying no. So if
Speaker 6: they continue to say no, that doesn't mean that the
Speaker 6: game is over. We still have opportunities to advance American
Speaker 6: national security interests there in Greenland. We have great basing
Speaker 6: rights under a nineteen fifties era treaty. We can increase
Speaker 6: our military presence there, we can develop natural resources there,
Speaker 6: we can sign deals to make sure that the Russians
Speaker 6: and the Chinese never have access to Greenland. So if
Speaker 6: we're not able to obtain Greenland through a commercial sale,
Speaker 6: that may well be the case. Plan B has to
Speaker 6: be boosing our presence there with one off agreements with
Speaker 6: the Danes and with the Greenlanders for the benefit of
Speaker 6: American national security and our economy.
Speaker 2: Well, I think President Trump was surprised because of the
Speaker 2: fact that he thought. I think he's used his technique
Speaker 2: in the past. I guess in some cases it's failed,
Speaker 2: but mostly he's been very successful with this kind of
Speaker 2: tough approach. And the tough approach didn't work, and it
Speaker 2: did not work. Like Nathan's sales said, Europe said no,
Speaker 2: Denmark said no, Greenland said no, everybody said, NATO said no.
Speaker 2: Everybody said no, We're not going to go with your idea.
Speaker 2: We're not going to do it. So this is the president,
Speaker 2: after sitting down and meeting with the head of NATO
Speaker 2: who he gets along with you for everybody.
Speaker 1: The title completely.
Speaker 7: Now can the people of the UK rest assure the
Speaker 7: deals comnation the fact that it looks like they have
Speaker 7: the concept of it. It's a long term deal, it's
Speaker 7: the ultimate long ternal I think it puts everybody at
Speaker 7: a really good position, especially as they security and minerals.
Speaker 1: Have you read the Look, how long would you deal
Speaker 1: with mister president the.
Speaker 3: Internet?
Speaker 8: It just takes to Denmark to just speaks to Dunmark
Speaker 8: or time.
Speaker 1: Money.
Speaker 6: Well, it's sign forever will there will there be the
Speaker 6: deal anywhere?
Speaker 2: Have Well kind of hard to hear because he was
Speaker 2: in the lobby of a building and its echoing and
Speaker 2: there were a lot of reporters asking questions. But he
Speaker 2: came out of the meeting with the NATO head and
Speaker 2: basically said we got a long term deal and involves minerals,
Speaker 2: and so there was some sort of deal announced. Nicholas Burns,
Speaker 2: who used to be an ambassador to NATO for the
Speaker 2: United States, reacted this one.
Speaker 8: Well, it sounds certainly better than yesterday's news. It sounds
Speaker 8: a little bit promising. Mark Ruta, the NATO Secretary General,
Speaker 8: has always had a way of working with President Trump,
Speaker 8: and I think President Trump clearly respects him. We'll have
Speaker 8: to see about this. The devil will be in the details.
Speaker 8: But the obvious off ramp here is that Denmark and
Speaker 8: the European Union are not going to permit the United
Speaker 8: States just to take Greenland for a price. And so
Speaker 8: if the deal here is that the United States can
Speaker 8: and build up our military forces on Greenland, and there's
Speaker 8: a nineteen fifty one agreement between the United States and
Speaker 8: Denmark that prohibits it and excuse me, permits it and
Speaker 8: welcomes it, that might be the off ramp. It won't
Speaker 8: be Greenland being sold to the United States. It won't be,
Speaker 8: as President Trump said this morning, by force of arms.
Speaker 8: It will be a deal between among NATO members and
Speaker 8: that's what should happen. I hope that's what this agreement means,
Speaker 8: but we'll have to see more details before we can
Speaker 8: be definitive about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those details are lacking. There was a post
Speaker 2: to truth Social and it read as follows. It said,
Speaker 2: based on a very productive meeting that I have had
Speaker 2: with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rute, we have
Speaker 2: formed the framework of a future deal with respect to
Speaker 2: Greenland and in fact the entire Arctic region. This solution,
Speaker 2: if consummated, will be a great one for the United
Speaker 2: States and all NATO nations. Based on this understanding, I
Speaker 2: will not be imposing the tariffs that were scheduled to
Speaker 2: go into effect on February first. Additional discussions are being
Speaker 2: held concerning the Golden Dome as it pertains to Greenland.
Speaker 2: Further information will be made available as discussions progress. Vice
Speaker 2: President Jed E. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special ENVOYE.
Speaker 2: Deed Witkoff, and various others as needed, will be responsible
Speaker 2: for the negotiations. They will report directly to me. Thank
Speaker 2: you for your attention to this matter. So as you
Speaker 2: can see, Wall Street popped about six seven hundred points
Speaker 2: on the word that there are no tariffs going into
Speaker 2: effect that he announced just a couple of days ago.
Speaker 2: The problem with this is Ken Griffith, who's of the
Speaker 2: wealthiest people in the country. He's a huge hedge fund guy.
Speaker 2: He used to run it out of Chicago. He moved
Speaker 2: the whole operation to Florida because of taxes and the
Speaker 2: problems in Chicago. But he's at the Davos meeting, and
Speaker 2: he was speaking to the audience earlier today and this
Speaker 2: is what he said.
Speaker 9: I think the biggest issue is no one's confident with
Speaker 9: the US terror policy is going to be two years,
Speaker 9: four years, six years, eight years from now. And before
Speaker 9: you spend hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of
Speaker 9: dollars to build a manufacturing plan, you really want to
Speaker 9: believe that the policy that is the anchor of that
Speaker 9: decision will be permanent in nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is driving people crazy. The business community is
Speaker 2: absolutely pulling their hair out because Donald Trump's on again,
Speaker 2: off again, on again, off again tariffs. Forget the whole
Speaker 2: discussion about tariffs, just the fact that whatever they're going
Speaker 2: to be, make them and keep them there for a
Speaker 2: long for the future. This is President Trump before the
Speaker 2: NATO meeting, in which he was still trying to find
Speaker 2: out a way to take control of Greenland.
Speaker 3: I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition
Speaker 3: of Greenland by the United States. If there is a war,
Speaker 3: much of the action will take place on that piece
Speaker 3: of ice. Think of it. Those missiles would be flying
Speaker 3: right over the center of that piece of ice.
Speaker 4: All we want from Denmark for national and international security
Speaker 4: and to keep our very energetic and dangerous potential enemies
Speaker 4: at bay. Is this land on which we're going to
Speaker 4: build the greatest golden dome ever built.
Speaker 2: So again, after the meeting with NATO, everything went completely
Speaker 2: A one point eighty was, well, we have found a
Speaker 2: framework work and JD. Bans and Marco Rubio and Steve
Speaker 2: Whitcoff are going to be the ones negotiating this whole deal.
Speaker 2: So the whole talk about war, the whole talk about
Speaker 2: taking over Greenland went out the door right after the
Speaker 2: NATO meetings. So it was quite a day starting off
Speaker 2: with we're not you know, starting what he first arrived,
Speaker 2: it was we were going to maybe use military force.
Speaker 2: His speech was we're not going to use military force.
Speaker 2: Then later in the day he says we might still
Speaker 2: have it the war takes place, and then finally never mind,
Speaker 2: we're going to have we've reached a framework. We're not
Speaker 2: giving details, but we've reached a framework. So it was
Speaker 2: it was a one no question about it as today
Speaker 2: went on. So that was don was the President's there
Speaker 2: again tomorrow, So just hold your hats on tight. I
Speaker 2: have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow. You don't
Speaker 2: know with him what he's going to do. Let's get
Speaker 2: some phone calls in. We haven't done this for a while.
Speaker 2: It's my fault. I apologize. The phone number if you
Speaker 2: want to call, leave your comments good, bad, or indifferent.
Speaker 2: The phone numbers eight five, five two nine, five sixty
Speaker 2: six hundred eight five five two nine five sixty six hundred.
Speaker 2: Find the number also if just go to my website
Speaker 2: at Tom Sullivan dot com. So let's begin with Rumba
Speaker 2: from Central Florida.
Speaker 10: Hello, Tom, this is your irregular regular caller Rumba from
Speaker 10: the Center of Florida. Happy New Year, and just the
Speaker 10: thought on our president, since it's becoming real obvious that
Speaker 10: I think we have a president who's now run by
Speaker 10: his ego. His ego seems to be out of control.
Speaker 10: I really think he gets up every morning and says,
Speaker 10: what can I do? Now? They can get me onto
Speaker 10: the news, the internet and the newspapers, and it is
Speaker 10: becoming real obvious. Somebody pointed out, I don't know live
Speaker 10: on your show, but he seems to be the new
Speaker 10: PT Bono. He's a barker, and it's like I am
Speaker 10: now the greatest show in Eric and he's just making
Speaker 10: a case of an example. Some years ago Chase, Vava
Speaker 10: and Capital One started closing his accounts. Well now he's
Speaker 10: suing Chase and Capital One. And it's so interesting that
Speaker 10: those three banks are three of the top ten credit
Speaker 10: card issue with in America that he's going again. So
Speaker 10: I think this is also he plays revenge. This is
Speaker 10: his way of telling your banks, well, you mess with me,
Speaker 10: and now I'm going to mess with you or else.
Speaker 10: So anyway, I just found that really curious that that
Speaker 10: seems to be the way this thing is. The whole
Speaker 10: thing in Greenland is just awful. What's going on and
Speaker 10: what he's trying to do and what he says. It's
Speaker 10: just it's gotten obnoxious. But as you said, that's the
Speaker 10: way he is. But I think his ego has just
Speaker 10: run away and it's becoming really obvious to a lot
Speaker 10: of us that this is something we're stuck with for
Speaker 10: the eternity for now. So anyway, just a thoughts for today.
Speaker 10: Glad to hear you're still out there on the podcast
Speaker 10: every day. Be well, catch you later.
Speaker 1: Well, thanks Rumba.
Speaker 2: The only thing is you have to realize Donald Trump yes, yes,
Speaker 2: his ego is huge. I mean, but that's he's always
Speaker 2: been this way. This isn't something new. Some people are going, oh,
Speaker 2: the old guy's going losing his mind. No, he's always
Speaker 2: been this way. He loves to get the attention. I
Speaker 2: mean the famous stories are what he would call New
Speaker 2: York media and say that he was somebody else and
Speaker 2: proclaim how great Donald Trump was. So no, that's that's
Speaker 2: just who he is. Let's see, Eric, comrade is uh
Speaker 2: as called let me let me play one of his calls.
Speaker 11: The question about Greenland is who needs it more? Denmark
Speaker 11: or United States? Obviously you can see those little countries
Speaker 11: Denmark wanting that huge island in America. I mean, it's
Speaker 11: unnecessary for that country from the security, even from economic
Speaker 11: they don't develop it at all. So the United States
Speaker 11: needed and Trump brought this inconvenient question, one of this.
Speaker 11: He always brings inconvenient questions and people just like, oh man,
Speaker 11: we don't want to think about it, we don't want
Speaker 11: to answer this question. But these guys keep bringing them
Speaker 11: and making people uncomfortab it's he's all. He's just trumped
Speaker 11: them for sure.
Speaker 2: Thank you, well, said Eric. And yes, the president is
Speaker 2: not afraid to ask inconvenient questions, and it makes people
Speaker 2: all nervous when when he does that. But he's done
Speaker 2: that for a long time. Uh, Gino in Reno called
Speaker 2: and it was really long and it timed out. I
Speaker 2: don't know how long you can leave a message, but
Speaker 2: I think it's just a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: So he called. He called back here here's Gino.
Speaker 12: Hey, Tom, Gino and Reno. I got cut off. I
Speaker 12: reached the maximum length of the comment line. A lot
Speaker 12: to say it, It's been a while anyway, I just
Speaker 12: want to end with I'm so delighted to be able
Speaker 12: to listen to you. I missed the conversations, but I
Speaker 12: still love being able to hear Salty and the comment
Speaker 12: line lady and a few of the other regulars. It's
Speaker 12: like old home weekend. It makes me smile. Keep up
Speaker 12: the great work, brother, enjoy your weekend, and we'll see
Speaker 12: what madness this weekend brings, and all look forward to
Speaker 12: hearing you share it with us on Monday.
Speaker 2: You can well, now there's funny of madness. We don't
Speaker 2: even have to wait for the weekend on something like that.
Speaker 2: Let's see what else have we got here? Oh, the
Speaker 2: comment line Lady Laurie, She weighed in, of course, always
Speaker 2: good to hear from her.
Speaker 13: The federal government is bringing whole milk back to school
Speaker 13: lunch rooms. It was originally banned because it was thought
Speaker 13: that whole milk would cause obesity in children. But that
Speaker 13: fear is unfounded because I've never yet seen a child
Speaker 13: drink milk in a school cafeteria.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right. Maybe little little kids, but
Speaker 2: but yeah, the older you get.
Speaker 1: No, you got to.
Speaker 2: We's wrong with milk? I like, I like whole milk.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I drank it when I was
Speaker 2: in school. But so with that kind of a late
Speaker 2: session today, but I want to get right to Wall
Speaker 2: Street because it started off this morning the future's markets
Speaker 2: were down, not dramatically, but they were down. I saw
Speaker 2: the Dow down over one hundred points before the market opened.
Speaker 2: President goes to Davos, starts with the speech about I
Speaker 2: don't want to use the military boom. The market turned around,
Speaker 2: went up one hundred and fifty two hundred points from
Speaker 2: being down over one hundred, and then he got to
Speaker 2: the point where the announcement came out that a framework
Speaker 2: of an agreement has been reached and the market popped.
Speaker 2: It went up seven hundred points. Didn't finished there, but
Speaker 2: it's still way up today, up five hundred eighty eight.
Speaker 2: The now back above forty nine thousand to forty nine
Speaker 2: thousand and seventy seven. The price of the S and
Speaker 2: P up seventy eight, the NASDAK up two hundred and seventy,
Speaker 2: gold up seventy dollars, people still nervous, seventy dollars up
Speaker 2: to four thou eight hundred and thirty six.
Speaker 1: I think that's a new record.
Speaker 2: And oil went up a little bit today, up to
Speaker 2: just under sixty one dollars for one barrel of oil.
Speaker 2: So that's it for today. Thank you for coming by.
Speaker 2: We will be back tomorrow. I hope to see you then.