Transcript: Angry Trump Demands Media Flatter Him as Brutal Poll Lands

And while the United States is dealing with Denmark in that regard, who is the U.S. really competing against? It’s not a country like Denmark; it is large rival powers like, say, China or possibly Russia, or a smaller country like Iran or North Korea. Those are America’s competitors in the world, and working with Denmark against a country like, say, China, or working with a country like Denmark on a shared problem like terrorism, leaves the United States a lot stronger, more capable of dealing with those problems and of advancing its interests in the world than if it is the U.S. alone picking fights with everybody at once while still trying to compete with other countries like, say, China.

Sargent: This notion of trust among the countries and that being essential to strength is really critical here. The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, issued a warning about Trump’s threats. She said, “I believe one should take the American president seriously when he says that he wants Greenland.” She added: “If the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops, including NATO and thus the security that has been established since the end of the Second World War.”

Now, Nick, if you just put aside whether Trump is actually serious about this or not, what you can see here in that response is that Trump’s own threats, which are spreading very real fears in Greenland and Denmark, are a weakening agent by itself. The fact that his threats will make our allies correctly more distrustful of us seems bad for America. I mean, I guess Trump thinks it’s good for our allies to be frightened of us. Can you talk about that?

Grossman: I don’t know if he thinks it is good for allies per se to be frightened, so much as he doesn’t really consider the concept of alliances as a serious issue or a serious benefit. That if he approaches the world as [if] everybody is totally selfish, everybody is always untrustworthy, everybody’s lying all the time and just advancing their agenda all the time, then everything is zero-sum, and then it’s just a question of whether I get one over on you or you get one over on me first.