Trump Didn’t Nuke Denmark, He Nuked His Own Country

Denmark is safe for now.Kevin Drum

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

Back in the day—i.e., 2016—I always figured there were two big reasons to hope Donald Trump didn’t win the Republican nomination. The first and most important was his straight-up appeal to bigotry and xenophobia, which the other Republican nominees mostly didn’t share. The second was that he might nuke Denmark.

That was the joke, anyway, but it was just shorthand for Trump screwing up some kind of foreign policy emergency, getting himself deeper and deeper into a hole, and then somehow ending up in a war that no one wanted. Nobody thought this was especially likely, but still, it was a 1 percent risk that the other candidates didn’t pose.

Then Trump got elected and three years passed. No war. No real threat of a war, either. Maybe we were all wrong?

Nope. “War,” it turned out, was itself shorthand for an emergency that Trump’s personality would cause him to mismanage. And the emergency turned out to be a pandemic. At first, Trump’s narcissism prevented him from believing that anything could be seriously wrong while he was in charge. Then his xenophobia caused him to address the problem solely by closing off a border, even though no one thought that would work. That eventually morphed into Trump’s bullheadedness preventing him from admitting he was mistaken and changing tack. And that, in turn, has caused him to close yet more borders.

In the meantime, there’s no consistent leadership from the White House. No consistent set of recommendations. No plans for mass testing. No national plans for containment or quarantine. Just experts becoming ever more shrill as the president does nothing and Mitch McConnell shrugs.

So in the end, Trump did nuke Denmark. Metaphorically speaking, that is. But it’s not Denmark that will pay the price, because—again, metaphorically—it’s actually the United States that he’s nuked.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate