Francesca Chambers

I mean, that was a big factor.

The president met with Rutte, who's been referred to as the Trump whisperer at the Davos conference.

And then he said afterwards, the president did on his true social post, that after talking with him, that a framework had been reached, an agreement had been breached here.

And that was very notable because sources I'd spoken to beforehand thought really the only Rutte could possibly

get him to walk back off of what they saw as this ledge that he was walking towards.

I wrote last week about how it was pushing NATO to the brink because with the president threatening to potentially use military force against Denmark that put the United States in direct conflict with a NATO ally.

And it really raised questions about Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which says that an attack on one ally is an attack on all, essentially.

Now, if the U.S.

had or tried ever to use military force there, it would be up to Denmark to invoke Article 5 in the first place.

But it gets into a really tricky and sticky situation because one of the top commanders for NATO is a U.S.

general, has always been a U.S.

general in that position.

And so there were just a lot of things there that made this very challenging situation.

For the United States and for its NATO allies, you also brought up the tariffs that President Trump was threatening.

These tariffs, he said that they would hit countries that were opposing this.

But the EU is one trade bloc, so it wouldn't just hit the countries.

that he was mentioning, which included Denmark and France and other countries.

It would be the entire European Union.

So then you really saw, I think, this robust pushback, this unity among European nations on what he was proposing here.

Not to say they hadn't before, but it definitely was a motivating factor.