Mr. Jefferson warned of the American Presidency: “bad men will sometime get in”. Now that we can plainly see; that we plainly know. The Sage of Monticello wrote for the ages. It is time for the Congressmen from both parties along with the Courts, and perhaps the Cabinet itself, to speak up more firmly to reign in a destructive President.
We all felt the threat to our stock market holdings when President Trump implied, he would take over Greenland by force and crash the NATO alliance. Yet, what did we hear in response to such madness from the GOP side of the aisle or from the Cabinet? Crickets.
Mr. Trump, apparently reacting to the nearly 1,000-point drop in the Dow after he rattled the sabers against Greenland, finally came out and ruled out force. Or perhaps it was the growing ferment to invoke the 25th Amendment that finally brought him to drop it. It was madness. Yet, he flew on to Davos on January 21 and continued to insult our allies and threaten NATO in a rant of a speech that really no one there or anywhere wanted to hear.
FDR and Winston Churchill established the rules-based order in 1941 by declaring in the Atlantic Charter that from then on, no nation would be allowed to take the territory of another nation by force. The United Nations Charter, signed by the United States in 1945, then enshrined that principle. Thereafter the United States created NATO in 1949 which then brought peace and prosperity between us and our European allies for over 75 years.
Yet, there was Mr. Trump at Davos, insulting our allies again; he continued to try to intimidate them. He said in mob boss fashion, that while we won’t use force to obtain Greenland, “we will remember” those nations who fail to cooperate. He said: “All we want is a place called Greenland.” Rasmus Jarlov, Denmark’s chairman of the Parliamentary defense committee, refused for one to be intimidated. Mr. Jarlov reiterated Denmark would not be “handing over” Greenland to the US.
Mr. Trump saved some of his worst venom for our neighbor to the north, Canada. He said of Canada and its Prime Minister, Mark Carney, that Canada “should be grateful also, but they’re not. …I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Mr. Carney, before becoming Prime Minister, was amazingly both a Governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-2013), and then a Governor of the Bank of England (2013-2020). Mr. Carney holds both an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a master’s degree from the University of Oxford. Mr. Carney had a distinguished professional career at both Goldman Sachs and the Bank of Canada. No, Mr. Carney was not about to be intimidated by the likes of Donald Trump.
All the while the President at Davos continued to threaten punishing tariffs if he didn’t get his way on Greenland from those he was there to disrespect. As a result, Bernd Lange, the head of the European Parliament’s committee on international trade, said it was “totally clear” that President Trump had broken the trade agreements the US had entered with Europe by threatening new tariffs. Lange announced the European Parliament was suspending implementation of the trade agreements struck last year as a result of the breach by the US. Apparently, Mr. Lange was not about to be intimidated by Mr. Trump either.
Given human nature, as Mr. Jefferson foresaw, demagoguery is always—and will always be—a danger in any democracy from “bad men” who may enter the political realm to exploit democracy for themselves instead of focusing on service to the demos, We the People.
Similarly, Madison observed in Federalist No. 10, the checks and balances of the separation of powers under the Constitution are there because, “enlightened statesmen will not aways be at the helm.” However, the checks and balances will not work if the Congress and the Courts are too timid to perform their roles to check the executive. Former Justice Anthony Kennedy recently stated: “The Constitution does not work if any one branch of the government insists on the exercise of its powers to the extreme.” (NYT Oct. 8, 2025).
It is time for the Congress and the courts to find their voice to reign in this President to stop the extremism and madness. If it gets worse, the Cabinet will need to step in as well to restore sanity. Mr. Trump cannot be allowed to threaten the rules-based order of nations that has maintained the shared security, peace and prosperity of the United States and Europe for over 75 years.
Robert P. Wise is a Northsider.
