Complete embarrassment, but let’s not let a malignant narcissist be the full image of America.
The international order is pushing back and we could push back internally.
Mark Carney’s speech was perfect. Not because he was diplomatic or conciliatory, but because he refused to appease the bully. He spoke truth to power clearly: the world is building what comes next, with or without America.
This is exactly what I mapped in World Ahead 2026: Part 3. While the bully rambled about “daddy” and threatened prosecution for the 2020 election, allies were drawing the line. When he backed down on tariffs and claimed a “framework deal” on Greenland (which is just surrendering back to the original agreement), it proved the strategy works.
The bully confused Greenland with Iceland at Davos. The president of the United States, threatening to annex territory, can’t keep straight which country he’s targeting. And Carney, Macron, and other leaders watched this mental deterioration while calmly explaining they’re building European defense independence, activating economic countermeasures, and decoupling from American reliability.
The domestic brutality we are witnessing (secret ICE memos, Fourth Amendment shredding, detaining children) and the international realignment happening at Davos are the same phenomenon: American institutional collapse forcing everyone to build alternatives.
Allies aren’t waiting for 2026 midterms or hoping resistance materializes. They’re watching federal agents operate like brownshirts, a president who can’t distinguish NATO allies, and a regime that openly discusses prosecuting people for refusing to help steal elections. That’s disqualifying. Even if American democracy somehow recovers, the trust is gone.
Carney’s speech matters because it signals the strategy shift: not hoping America stabilizes, but building what works without American reliability. That external pressure might be the only thing that forces accountability domestically.
The world is moving on. And Davos this week showed they’re done waiting.
“…let’s not let a malignant narcissist be the full image of America”? He was elected by America. Twice. Maybe even three times, based on his fever dreams. This is who America is, bub. A country built on patriarchal, Christian white supremacy and hegemony. So little has changed at the core, and the control still rests in the hands of those original powers. Trump is a caricature of America, and an exaggeration of its worst features, but he was chosen by the people.
Thank you for your excellent expansion of Aaron's piece. Yes, it appears that our former allies have had enough of the bullshit emanating from across the pond and are contemplating life without us. This shift will have severe consequences for the US and will add us to the list of has-been tinpot dictatorships. The embarrassing thing is that the world listens to the deranged madman and assumes that he speaks for all of us.
Exactly, Aaron. Mitch McConnell calling for impeachment if he attacks Greenland…he should have done that approx 1,840 days ago. He’s the reason Trump has been able to burn this country to the ground.😡Thanks for your sharing your thoughts. I agree with you.
If this isn’t obvious to anyone with a functioning brain, then please tell me what else we need to know? How much more evidence do we need to tip the scales?
I mean, Occam's razor - did the majority of voters in the US really vote for this?
Or is the simpler explanation that they didn't. But rather that voter suppression, gerrymandering, voter purgers, voting machine manipulation and other irregularities meant an energised minority was able to enthrone Trump in the presidency?
Excellent read! On the other hand I am embarrassed! This man needs to be stopped. He continues to talk and the hole keeps getting deeper. I hope our allies slam him big time!!
Yeah he's an embarrassment alright - and that's putting it kindly. As an Australian I'm not harmed in the way hundreds of right thinking US folks are by this malevalent clown. But I sadly warn them that even a good post Trump President won't be able to undo the damage in one term or even two. The USA will never regain the trust and respect it had pre-Trump....that will be work of generations of good government.
Perhaps helped by my comfortable distance I can manage saddened acceptance for low-information people who voted for him in 2024. Maybe the fools really thought he might bring prices down (though the average Australian voter would know tarrifs reliably increase prices). But I'm afraid I have nothing but contempt for people who still defend him after the first year of this term.
Sinful man that I am some of that contempt spills over to retiring Senator Thillis. A pitfful example of moral and intellectual cowardice.
It is absolutely embarrassing to hear Trump unleash his rambling vendetta in full view- and the world is watching us, waiting to see how we respond. With this administration there are so many abuses that it is hard to decide which is worse. As much as I loathe McConnell for being so spineless when he should have held strong I can’t focus on that- we must put pressure on our elected officials to take action against everyone they can- the impeachment of Noem, Bondi, Kennedy- and “the big Kahuna”. Do what is possible now and complete the removal process after the election. Time to take the trash out!
One quibble with your piece… it’s not water under the bridge that the snake is in office.
He cheated in 2024. He told you. Elon told you.
The dimwit couldn’t fill a high school gym at the end of the campaign while Kamala packed 75000+ into the ellipse.
She raised $1B in 109 days and drove record voters to turn out. But when those numbers weren’t reflected in the polls, after 200 bomb threats, you all capitulated!!
It’s been puzzling me why she conceded so quickly, but there wasn’t hoards of you out in the streets. You all just accepted the results from a lifelong conman and carried on.
The https://electiontruthalliance.org has been showing data analysis videos that make it obvious trump cheated with some high tech assistance.
This is an illegitimate regime!
Schumer & Jeffries know it. So does Ken Martin. Still they accept it because none of you are making them be honest by withholding your labour and money.
I am tempted to give up on my American neighbours but I can’t.
I cannot bring myself to listen to the speech, so thank you Aaron for highlighting the worst of it. It is clear that the 25th Amendment is useless as written. As Heather Cox Richardson noted, none of the cabinet members are qualified for their jobs, so the last thing they want to do is to remove the man who gave them those jobs. Or even if any of those cabinet members should contemplate taking action, they still serve at the pleasure of the president. As Jim Acosta put it, "Move against 'Grandpa,' and you will be out of the will." What is needed is an independent medical board, but how do we set one up so that it cannot be hijacked the way RFK Jr. has highjacked Health and Human Services? In addition to strategy for getting through the current time, we need to think about the future and what we can do in future rebuilding and strengthening of our democracy, which will take many years.
On Greenland. The details are the same as they were in 1951. The US can build military bases and ports in Greenland. Specifically, the prior agreement from 1951 signed by the US and Denmark: "construct, install, maintain, and operate” military bases across Greenland, “house personnel” and “control landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements, and operation of ships, aircraft, and waterborne craft.” Trump, and "his people" have been told this over and over since his babbling began over a year ago....
Aaron Rupar always does a great job encapsulating Trump speaking (uh, babbling) over on BlueSky. So much so, I am often directed over to BlueSky repeatedly when reading Adam Parkhomenko's daily irreverence. But as much as video can hit you over the head, I always recommend seeking out the actual transcripts of such Trump comments, speeches, spontaneous and not so spontaneous "talking". It is like fictional Chancellor Gorkon's famous line in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon..." That might be funny, but Trump is not.
Download a transcript or two. You can pick almost anything post 2015. Read Trump, out loud, carefully, word for word. Do not let your brain do what it normally does when reading -- making grammar corrections, adjusting flow, adding words, or trying to connect the dots. There are no dots. "The weave"? Significant cognitive decline. Some portion of the US electorate seems to want to ignore it, but it is on display almost daily. The world got a big serving this week. Stop appeasing Trump. He is not well. 25A.
Complete embarrassment, but let’s not let a malignant narcissist be the full image of America.
The international order is pushing back and we could push back internally.
Mark Carney’s speech was perfect. Not because he was diplomatic or conciliatory, but because he refused to appease the bully. He spoke truth to power clearly: the world is building what comes next, with or without America.
This is exactly what I mapped in World Ahead 2026: Part 3. While the bully rambled about “daddy” and threatened prosecution for the 2020 election, allies were drawing the line. When he backed down on tariffs and claimed a “framework deal” on Greenland (which is just surrendering back to the original agreement), it proved the strategy works.
The bully confused Greenland with Iceland at Davos. The president of the United States, threatening to annex territory, can’t keep straight which country he’s targeting. And Carney, Macron, and other leaders watched this mental deterioration while calmly explaining they’re building European defense independence, activating economic countermeasures, and decoupling from American reliability.
The domestic brutality we are witnessing (secret ICE memos, Fourth Amendment shredding, detaining children) and the international realignment happening at Davos are the same phenomenon: American institutional collapse forcing everyone to build alternatives.
Allies aren’t waiting for 2026 midterms or hoping resistance materializes. They’re watching federal agents operate like brownshirts, a president who can’t distinguish NATO allies, and a regime that openly discusses prosecuting people for refusing to help steal elections. That’s disqualifying. Even if American democracy somehow recovers, the trust is gone.
Carney’s speech matters because it signals the strategy shift: not hoping America stabilizes, but building what works without American reliability. That external pressure might be the only thing that forces accountability domestically.
The world is moving on. And Davos this week showed they’re done waiting.
— Johan
“…let’s not let a malignant narcissist be the full image of America”? He was elected by America. Twice. Maybe even three times, based on his fever dreams. This is who America is, bub. A country built on patriarchal, Christian white supremacy and hegemony. So little has changed at the core, and the control still rests in the hands of those original powers. Trump is a caricature of America, and an exaggeration of its worst features, but he was chosen by the people.
Thank you for your excellent expansion of Aaron's piece. Yes, it appears that our former allies have had enough of the bullshit emanating from across the pond and are contemplating life without us. This shift will have severe consequences for the US and will add us to the list of has-been tinpot dictatorships. The embarrassing thing is that the world listens to the deranged madman and assumes that he speaks for all of us.
Exactly, Aaron. Mitch McConnell calling for impeachment if he attacks Greenland…he should have done that approx 1,840 days ago. He’s the reason Trump has been able to burn this country to the ground.😡Thanks for your sharing your thoughts. I agree with you.
If this isn’t obvious to anyone with a functioning brain, then please tell me what else we need to know? How much more evidence do we need to tip the scales?
HOLY SHIT!
I mean, Occam's razor - did the majority of voters in the US really vote for this?
Or is the simpler explanation that they didn't. But rather that voter suppression, gerrymandering, voter purgers, voting machine manipulation and other irregularities meant an energised minority was able to enthrone Trump in the presidency?
I suspect the latter...
As this morning's PN states". "...the sickness of American society..."
Excellent read! On the other hand I am embarrassed! This man needs to be stopped. He continues to talk and the hole keeps getting deeper. I hope our allies slam him big time!!
There are 535 people in Washington DC who could be speaking out every day and taking actions against this. Their silence is complicity.
Yeah he's an embarrassment alright - and that's putting it kindly. As an Australian I'm not harmed in the way hundreds of right thinking US folks are by this malevalent clown. But I sadly warn them that even a good post Trump President won't be able to undo the damage in one term or even two. The USA will never regain the trust and respect it had pre-Trump....that will be work of generations of good government.
Perhaps helped by my comfortable distance I can manage saddened acceptance for low-information people who voted for him in 2024. Maybe the fools really thought he might bring prices down (though the average Australian voter would know tarrifs reliably increase prices). But I'm afraid I have nothing but contempt for people who still defend him after the first year of this term.
Sinful man that I am some of that contempt spills over to retiring Senator Thillis. A pitfful example of moral and intellectual cowardice.
The way we're going the best we could hope for is that NATO would let us send people to the Hague instead of completely shutting us out.
That is, of course, if there's even a country left three years from now.
Every single goddamn person who voted for him should have their voting rights permanently stripped.
It is absolutely embarrassing to hear Trump unleash his rambling vendetta in full view- and the world is watching us, waiting to see how we respond. With this administration there are so many abuses that it is hard to decide which is worse. As much as I loathe McConnell for being so spineless when he should have held strong I can’t focus on that- we must put pressure on our elected officials to take action against everyone they can- the impeachment of Noem, Bondi, Kennedy- and “the big Kahuna”. Do what is possible now and complete the removal process after the election. Time to take the trash out!
One quibble with your piece… it’s not water under the bridge that the snake is in office.
He cheated in 2024. He told you. Elon told you.
The dimwit couldn’t fill a high school gym at the end of the campaign while Kamala packed 75000+ into the ellipse.
She raised $1B in 109 days and drove record voters to turn out. But when those numbers weren’t reflected in the polls, after 200 bomb threats, you all capitulated!!
It’s been puzzling me why she conceded so quickly, but there wasn’t hoards of you out in the streets. You all just accepted the results from a lifelong conman and carried on.
The https://electiontruthalliance.org has been showing data analysis videos that make it obvious trump cheated with some high tech assistance.
This is an illegitimate regime!
Schumer & Jeffries know it. So does Ken Martin. Still they accept it because none of you are making them be honest by withholding your labour and money.
I am tempted to give up on my American neighbours but I can’t.
https://ThisWillHold.Substack.com has more details of the fraudulent election.
Please wake up American people! Before it’s too late.
I cannot bring myself to listen to the speech, so thank you Aaron for highlighting the worst of it. It is clear that the 25th Amendment is useless as written. As Heather Cox Richardson noted, none of the cabinet members are qualified for their jobs, so the last thing they want to do is to remove the man who gave them those jobs. Or even if any of those cabinet members should contemplate taking action, they still serve at the pleasure of the president. As Jim Acosta put it, "Move against 'Grandpa,' and you will be out of the will." What is needed is an independent medical board, but how do we set one up so that it cannot be hijacked the way RFK Jr. has highjacked Health and Human Services? In addition to strategy for getting through the current time, we need to think about the future and what we can do in future rebuilding and strengthening of our democracy, which will take many years.
On Greenland. The details are the same as they were in 1951. The US can build military bases and ports in Greenland. Specifically, the prior agreement from 1951 signed by the US and Denmark: "construct, install, maintain, and operate” military bases across Greenland, “house personnel” and “control landings, takeoffs, anchorages, moorings, movements, and operation of ships, aircraft, and waterborne craft.” Trump, and "his people" have been told this over and over since his babbling began over a year ago....
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/world/europe/trump-greenland-denmark-us-defense-pact.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/us/politics/trump-greenland-nato.html
It might be time for them to revoke those privileges before they're used against them.
Yes, and Yes. That this criminal regime reflects the "...sickness in American society..." is one, if not t-h-e, profoundest worries.
Aaron Rupar always does a great job encapsulating Trump speaking (uh, babbling) over on BlueSky. So much so, I am often directed over to BlueSky repeatedly when reading Adam Parkhomenko's daily irreverence. But as much as video can hit you over the head, I always recommend seeking out the actual transcripts of such Trump comments, speeches, spontaneous and not so spontaneous "talking". It is like fictional Chancellor Gorkon's famous line in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon..." That might be funny, but Trump is not.
Download a transcript or two. You can pick almost anything post 2015. Read Trump, out loud, carefully, word for word. Do not let your brain do what it normally does when reading -- making grammar corrections, adjusting flow, adding words, or trying to connect the dots. There are no dots. "The weave"? Significant cognitive decline. Some portion of the US electorate seems to want to ignore it, but it is on display almost daily. The world got a big serving this week. Stop appeasing Trump. He is not well. 25A.