EU Discovers the Cost of Cowardice, Minnesotans the Price for Courage

Listen To This Story

One of the most remarkable aspects of this era is that, in the face of Donald Trump’s constant bullying, threats, and mobster-like tactics, it is regular Americans who are defying a mad monarch while those in positions of power routinely cower before him.

This week, we once again saw how that is working out.

On the one hand, there are European leaders who have been trying to appease Trump at every turn instead of showing strength. Whether he is waging a trade war against them, threatening to invade Greenland, or trying to extort Ukraine rather than helping it stand up to Russian aggression, they have been trying to coddle the US president and cut deals that seek to minimize the damage he does rather than get him to back off.

However, as Europe should know better than anybody, there is no appeasing someone like Trump. You allow him to remilitarize the Rhineland and he’ll annex Austria. You let him do that, and he’ll manufacture a crisis to occupy the Sudetenland.

Oops, sorry, wrong fascist, but you get the point. Just replace “remilitarize the Rhineland” with “start a trade war,” and “Austria” with “Greenland.”

And yet, they thought they could try to make a deal on tariffs with someone who doesn’t honor deals. This weekend, the inevitable happened.

Trump threatened new tariffs against European countries that sent troops to Greenland and warned them that they were playing “a very dangerous game.”

According to the president, they will be subject to a 10 percent tariff on all goods that will go up to 25 percent on June 1 until they allow the US to purchase Greenland.

Supposedly, this is necessary to secure Greenland against threats from China and Russia even though the US is already bound to defend it as part of its NATO obligations and can put any military installation it wants on the world’s largest island.

In other words, none of Trump’s claims make any sense… he just wants to increase the size of the United States as part of his legacy.

We have seen this dynamic play out over and over with other countries (although not those who routinely defy Trump like China), and always with the same result: Mollifying the US president doesn’t work.

This is also true for the corporations, news organizations, universities, and law firms who caved to his demands. Ultimately, he will always come back for more, no matter which agreement has been reached (although we should point out that bribes seem to work just fine).

What is most maddening about this is that all of these leaders and executives wouldn’t pay a personal price for defying Trump. They would all still be extremely wealthy and powerful.

Compare that to the regular Americans who are taking to the streets in freezing temperatures in Minnesota to protest the federal government terrorizing their community. They could just stay in their warm homes and peek out of their windows as masked goons are rounding up their neighbors.

Instead, at a potentially very high cost, as the death of Renee Good has shown, they are defying the brutal overreach of the administration.

And their resistance is bearing fruit.

A new poll has shown that their protests, which are highlighting the brutality of Trump’s deportation policy, are causing a shift in how Americans think about it.

By a 16-point margin, they disapprove of how the president is handling the issue of immigration. While they are split 50-50 over whether they like his deportation program, by a margin of nearly 2-to-1, they don’t like how he is going about achieving it.

In the past couple of months, there has also been a notable shift in how they view ICE’s tactics.

In November, 56 percent of Americans felt that ICE is being “too tough” when stopping and detaining people. Now, that figure has climbed to 61 percent.

Furthermore, Americans are now also less likely to think that the administration is focusing on deporting dangerous criminals and more likely to think that it is targeting other immigrants.

Finally, by a wide margin, they believe that ICE is making their communities less safe.

There is a good chance that we would not have seen this attitude shift if it weren’t for protests and brave patriots risking their own health to record the excesses of the masked thugs the Trump administration is dispatching throughout the country, i.e., to states that voted against the president.

And there is nothing in it for them apart from knowing that they are standing up to an oppressive regime and that they are doing the right thing.

Maybe world leaders and corporate executives should take note.