You know, I think Greenland is complicated because it has an interesting relationship with Denmark. Denmark says it doesn't own it, but they handle foreign policy for the island. They handle a lot of other things for the island. The island is very small and sparsely populated, and it also wants an independent movement. So I don't think that it would want to necessarily join the United States. There would have to be a lot of complicated foreign policy actions for Greenland first to become independent and then decide to join the U.S., none of which seems

very likely. It's also interesting in the sense that, you know, you think about Trump and people who maybe describe themselves with a particular style of American nationalism. We know global warming is making the Arctic more passable. I think in the long run, there's been talk about how you might eventually have shipping lanes that cross the Arctic Ocean in a way they do not currently, or at least have only begun barely. And so, this could be sort of the next frontier of international conflict or international, you know, trade, conflict, all the things that can come into foreign policy and the interaction between sovereign nations. You could even kind of lump this in with the idea of the madman theory, which is something that Richard Nixon, sort of the school of thought around his foreign policy, had to do with the idea that they wanted foreign adversaries to think it was possible the U.S. would be willing to do lots of things that maybe it wouldn't actually be willing to do, but because they sort of left the universe of possible actions more open and unknown, more unpredictability made those other countries more fearful and perhaps more willing to go along with things the U.S. suggested. You can see a little bit of that in what Trump's doing. The degree to which he is actively thinking about the term madman theory, I do not know, but I'm just saying it's it's i think you can see that he's done this in the past and he's sort of doing it again okay so just to get it out of the way you know the the fun

question that we always get if somehow canada did become a state if greenland did become a state how would it affect american politics how would they vote jeffrey well we

know from polling action before the 2024 election that Canadians would have pretty overwhelmingly backed Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. So if Canada somehow became a single state out of the United States, which, oh, by the way, it's six times larger than Alaska in land area. And Alaska is about a fifth of the lower 48, right? So we're talking a stupidly large state. But if you're not splitting Canada into like 10, 11, 12 states or whatever, you know, corresponding more or less to the current provinces that the country has, it would be probably a pretty solidly democratic state. It would be either the largest or second largest or depending on the timing of when the census data you're looking at, state by population, competing with California for that honor. Yeah, so we'd be looking at like what, like 50

electoral votes or something

like that? Yeah, it would be like roughly 50 electoral votes and close to 50 seats in the House. And so if Democrats were adding that, that would be great for them electorally if we're still operating with 538 total electoral votes and you need 270 to win. Democrats are sitting at like 250 or so to start with just based on sort of states that regularly vote Democratic. So that would be, I think, real handy for Democrats in that sense if they added Canada. sure actually what Democrats would really love if we were actually to play this scenario out is that they would love to add multiple Canadian states because then you'd get more of an impact in the Senate, right, where every state is guaranteed two members. Greenland, on the other hand, I think it's worth noting, has something like 56, 57,000 people. And that makes it less populous by some distance than the U.S. Virgin Islands, which had 87,000 people in 2020, and just a little bit more populous than tiny American Samoa in the Pacific, which had about 50,000 people. If we make Greenland a state, that would be a pretty radical departure from the fact that we haven't made any of these other territories states that are particularly small. And I think that's worth noting because when the election for House Speaker happened, Stacey Plaskett, the delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands, basically raised an objection that none of the delegates or the residential commissioner from Puerto Rico, that their names had not been called on the vote for House Speaker, making clearly a public protest of sorts that basically that they don't really have voting representation, even though you're talking about, you know, a few million people who are American citizens but do not have voting representation in Congress. Thinking about Greenland as a state connects back to the fact that a lot of these other places are not states yet and may never be. It's

really odd to think of Canada as being one state, this huge geographic territory with so many people who already identify by their provinces in some sense. You know, there's a big Cabochois independence movement. And so it's hard to imagine Canada just being like, okay, we're one state. No, I don't think that they would like that.

Right. Obviously, we're talking this is one of those scenarios that is not going to happen. So this is completely fanciful and hypothetical. But to turn back toward, you know, the more serious aspects here, you know, if these scenarios aren't going to happen, why is Trump proposing all of these things? That's

really the question. And there are a lot of theories, one of which is that, you know, this is part of Trump's kind of a style. It's part of what he does. He says a lot of things. He just says whatever he wants. And some of them are outrageous and people decide whether to take them seriously or not. And in the meantime, he's also doing things as president. And so your intention is kind of or president elect or he's planning to do things as president again for his second term. And so your attention is kind of divided and it's hard to know where to look. So I think that's one of the more prevalent theories is this is part of his just way of being a politician and also part of a kind of a strategy, however loosely that may be defined, to kind of throw things at the wall and see what sticks get me will trend abc tuesdays i don't even know where he is will trent is back you

thought you could hide forever time to come home the

series