Trump raises the issue of using military or economic force to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal


President-elect Donald J. Trump said Tuesday that he would not rule out using military or economic coercion to force Panama to relinquish control of a canal built by America more than a century ago and to force Denmark to sell Greenland to the United States.

At a messy press conference that lasted an hour, Mr. Trump also repeated his threat that “all hell would break loose in the Middle East” if the hostages held by Hamas were not released by Inauguration Day, repeating the threat four times.

“If they don’t come back by the time I take office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” he told reporters. “And that’s not going to be good for Hamas, and it’s not going to be good, frankly, for anybody. All hell will break loose. I don’t need to say more, but that’s how it is.”

Mr. Trump did not elaborate during the news conference, where he aired a litany of grievances, complaints and false claims, from withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2021 to offshore drilling to the criminal cases against him and the size of his election victory.

He refused to rule out the use of military force to retake the Panama Canal, which was returned to Panama in a treaty in the late 1990s, and Greenland, which Mr. Trump has said is necessary for the national security of the United States.

“You might have to do something,” he said.

Trump’s desire to expand the American footprint is entirely in line with his mindset of making everything he controls as big as possible, going back to his acquisition spree in the late 1980s. In recent days, Mr. Trump has repeatedly talked about buying Greenland and taking over the Panama Canal.

It’s not clear how serious the president-elect was about some of his comments during the press conference. At one point he suggested that his administration would rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico.

The press conference was a moment of return to the future for Mr. Trump, who has often used similar appearances as president to take control of the public narrative by attacking his opponents and making bombastic and often false claims about his accomplishments.

In an appearance before the press, which was described as an announcement of economic development, Mr. Trump attacked President Biden for banning oil drilling in some waters, said the special prosecutor investigating him was “deranged” and attacked the New York judge overseeing the criminal case against him.

“It’s a sick group of people, and it was all about influencing the election,” Mr. Trump said. “It was all a fight against their political opponent. We never had that in this country. We had that in some countries. We had it in third-tier countries.”

Before asking questions, Mr. Trump spoke for more than half an hour without focusing on any topic. He talked about the concentration of Mr. Biden on electric cars, saying, “I don’t know what it is about electric cars. This guy loves electricity.” He also complained about the shower heads with limited water flow.

“It’s called rain, it falls from the sky. And they want to do, the water does not come out of the shower,” he said. “It’s drip, drip, drip. So what happens if you’re in the shower 10 times longer, you know. Water does not flow from the tap.”

He also returned to one of his favorite targets: his hatred of windmills.

“Windmills drive whales crazy,” he said.

The president-elect has spoken at length about foreign policy, criticizing Biden’s handling of the war in Ukraine, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the conflict in Israel. He also repeated his threat not to protect NATO allies, a core part of the pact, unless they increase the amount of money they spend on their own countries’ defense.

At one point he appeared to confirm a recent story in the Financial Times suggesting he wanted NATO countries to commit to spending up to 5 percent of their economic output on defense, a significant increase.

He also criticized Canada, saying that that country should be a country in the US because of the economic support that the US provides to that country. He said he would not use military power to achieve this, but said he would use economic power to pressure America’s neighbor.

“Why do we support the state, more than 200 million a year?” he told reporters. “Our army is at their disposal for all these other things. They should be the state. That’s what I told Trudeau when he came down.”

Mr. Trump has threatened to use “economic force” to bring Canada and the United States together, implying that the United States will reduce its purchases of Canadian products.

He also said he would “impose very high tariffs on Denmark” if he did not cede Greenland to the United States.

During the press conference, Mr. Trump was told that a federal judge had prevented Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating his actions on January 6 and his handling of classified documents, from releasing a report on the investigations.

“So if they’re not allowed to issue a report, so be it,” he said. “Why was he allowed to write a false report? It will just be a fake report. That’s great news.”



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