Trump’s nod at US military action to seize Greenland and Panama Canal draws fury from European leaders: Live – UK Times

President-elect Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court, on Wednesday, to pause proceedings in his New York criminal trial, including sentencing which is set to take place on Friday.

Ariana Baio has the details.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said yesterday that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders” and Foreign Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen moved this morning to downplay the tensions with the United States by declaring: “I have no experience that we are in a foreign policy crisis.”

However, Don Jr’s flying visit to Nuuk on Tuesday was not entirely harmonious, with the president’s son rebuking Denmark for refusing to give up the autonomous Arctic territory.

Here’s more from Graig Graziosi.

Panama’s Foreign Minister Javier Martinez-Acha has told the US president-elect in no uncertain terms that his country’s control over the canal is “non-negotiable” in the latest reality check for Trump’s dreams of global expansion.

The American used his news conference at Mar-a-Lago yesterday to threaten military intervention to reclaim the Panama Canal after falsely stating it was being operated by Chinese soldiers.

While the US managed the canal for decades it was signed over to Panama by the late Jimmy Carter in 1977 before the nation took full control in 1999, a move Trump bemoaned as “a big mistake”.

Martinez-Acha has now responded by saying that “the only hands operating the canal are Panamanian and that is how it is going to stay”.

If you don’t speak Spanish, you’ll have to click on the “Translate Post” option for this one.

The president-elect has reached out to the highest court in the land to try to stop New York’s Judge Juan Merchan sentencing him over his hush money conviction at the end of this week after his numerous appeals were rejected.

Joe Biden has said that he still believes he could have beaten Republican rival Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election had he not been persuaded to stand down to make way for Vice President Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket, only for her to lose the vote.

Speaking to USA Today, the outgoing president, 82, was asked whether he believed he could have succeeded where Harris failed had he pressed on, rather than bowing to pressure to step aside in July following his disastrous CNN debate performance.

“It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes, based on the polling,” Biden answered, without citing which poll he was referring to and despite his having lagged behind Trump throughout the campaign in both national and battleground state surveys.

Here’s another interesting exchange from yesterday, when the president-elect was angered by a reporter asking him about US military strategy, saying “only a stupid person” would respond to such a question.

Here’s a look at one of the president-elect’s more left-field pronouncements yesterday.

It’s, er, actually just two percent sir.

Here’s more from Mike Bedigan on the president-elect’s fury over Biden’s coastal oil and gas drilling ban.

The president-elect’s dark hints of military action overseas has already inspired an angry reaction from France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.

He told French radio on Wednesday morning: “There is obviously no question that the European Union would let other nations of the world attack its sovereign borders, whoever they are. We are a strong continent.”

Here’s more from Maddy Sherratt.

Donald Trump gave his first rambling press conference of the new year at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, bafflingly leaping from one topic to another.

Ostensibly arranged to announce new foreign investment in the US, the president-elect took the opportunity to attack Joe Biden over the transition process and refused to rule out using military or economic coercion to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal.

Trump further railed against windmills, electric heaters, water pressure, soap, dishwashers, Canada and the legal cases brought against him in 2023.

At one point, he said he wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and then claimed Hezbollah might have been at the US Capitol on January 6 2021.

Here’s Andrew Feinberg with a full report on Trump’s alarming performance.