Trump has made the news for a lot more than usual lately. He’s always been a loudmouth, and made promises that he couldn’t keep, and just generally been a blowhard. But his recent talk about annexing Canada as the “51st State,’ taking back the Panama Canal, and buying Greenland basically at gunpoint sound far more real than the media is letting on.

In fact, Canadian ministers dismissed his talk about their own country as joking — right before he went on about it ad nauseum, tweeting over and over again. The joke suddenly started to seem very real.

The talk about Panama comes at a time when many of his decisions are being influenced by Elon Musk — who would benefit greatly by America owning the international shipping lanes he frequently uses.

And the Greenland discussion is perhaps the most alarming of all. He talks about it from a defense standpoint, but truly wants the huge stores of rare earth minerals that are used in technology. His former ambassador to Denmark, which controls Greenland, went on Newsmax to talk about how hard it would be for the northern kingdom to “defend” the massive island.

Trump is absolutely not joking. This is his first ambassador to Denmark, talking about simply taking Greenland if the “small country” of Denmark won’t sell it. pic.twitter.com/EZh2OPfRZ7

— Drewbear (@infuzi0n) December 30, 2024

Defend it from who?

But the scariest part of all of this is the fact that other countries are watching what Trump is doing, and they’re either terrified — a perfectly reasonable response for smaller countries — or they’re emboldened. With Russia, it’s the latter.

Julia Davis, who has been covering Russia for years and translating what’s going on in their media from an American perspective, weighed in for the Daily Best. According to her report, Trump’s announced intentions “are being celebrated as implicit validation for Russia’s current and future land grabs.” And make no mistake: They believe he will succeed.

During a broadcast of Vesti Nedeli (“The Weekly News,” a Russian state television broadcast), host Dmitry Kiselyov told viewers:

Trump isn’t joking. He is determined to expand American territorial possessions. Personally, I am convinced that he will succeed. Trump will grab strategically important parts of the world for America. It isn’t funny. What is funny is to see whether anyone in the Old World will try to sanction the United States in response to its territorial expansion. This is when we will find out how principled the lovers of sanctions truly are.

Think about it. If Trump gets away with all of this, inspired by his success, he might look at the rest of the globe, focus on vulnerable spots, and keep going. Where will he stop? Doesn’t it mean that others can do the same?

And that’s a guy who doesn’t want to see Trump get away with it. What do the propagandists in Russia think? Well, Vladimir Solovyov, the host of his own state TV show, was ebullient.

“These are awesome statements! No, he is not joking… of course he isn’t joking! Do you think I’m kidding when I say that Finland, Warsaw, the Baltics, Moldova, and Tallinn [Estonia] should come back home? Do you think I’m joking? No! They should all rejoin the Russian Empire. Followed by Alaska, by the way. Give it back.”

During his conversation with State Duma member Andrey Lugovoy, Solovyov summed it up: “The way he is rationalizing it is tremendous. We should follow his example and quietly take everything back.”

Lugovoy added the part that has everyone nervous: “My friends, Trump’s insane statements show that there should not be any ceasefire. Why would we need a ceasefire when we’re confidently moving forward?”

But the conversation hardly ended there.

Solovyov went on to say, “I believe that what Trump is doing benefits us greatly. Trump is totally destroying any illusions that anyone might have still had about the summit of democracies, about respecting opinions of NATO allies. It’s like he’s saying, ‘Who are all of you? You’re all nobodies! I will talk to Putin and Xi Jinping… He is a great guy, an awesome guy!'”

One guest, Professor Dmitry Evstafiev, told the panel, “Trump did something fantastic for Russia and for the whole world… He clearly answered a question, ‘Leadership or hegemony?’ and chose hegemony. With his approach of geographical enlargement, he buried the entire collective West. There is no collective West, and it will never be united again.”

That is a truly terrifying thought, and Evstafiev could be absolutely right.

Another guest, military expert Mikhail Khodaryonok, said that there was an underlying message. “After the statement of President-elect Donald Trump about Canada, Greenland, and Panama, in my opinion, we can now consider special military operations as the norm for resolving arguments between countries. The silence of European leaders clearly confirms this.”

Everyone on the panel seemed to agree that Trump’s geopolitical aims, as clearly as he’s already stated them, signal a green light for any other would-be empires.

That’s something we’ll have to resist even harder than tax cuts for billionaires or mass deportations. We cannot become an empire, and we will not survive Trump as emperor.