Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
1/22/26: Trump Caves On Greenland, John Mearsheimer On Greenland, Iran & MORE!
22 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here.
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Chapter 2: What did Trump announce regarding Greenland?
These are the details, all right? Small pockets of land for the U.S. You want to know what those small pockets of land are? They're called bases. Now, this is my favorite invented term I've seen so far. The U.S. will get sovereignty over its bases. In Greenland, as if you don't have sovereignty over a military base that you already have. Yes. The U.S.
will be involved in Greenland's mineral rights. Duration of the deal is an indefinite timeline designed to block Russian influence in Greenland. U.S. Golden Dome system will be involved. Opens door to U.S.-backed infrastructure investment, a.k.a. every single thing that the Danes were like, you can have all of this.
You already have it. As long as you don't. Not even you can have this. You literally already have it.
You have most of this. We can increase it a little bit if you want to.
Like they were blocking us from doing mineral deals in Greenland. I mean, we already had this agreement in place where we could basically do whatever we wanted on Greenland. And I mean, you have to laugh, but it's not like, you know, in a sense, I'm sort of glad because I think it was actually a wake up call for the world.
Yeah.
You know, the speech that Mark Carney gave the Canadian prime minister where he was like, listen, this whole liberal international order thing, we've been going along with it, even acknowledging that it's never really been real and that there is a giant distance between the principles and values of it and the reality of it. Like, you can't take that speech back.
So it's not like we end here exactly where we started. No, we do end up in a somewhat different place. And to be honest with you, I think it's probably positive that the Europeans, Canada, the rest of the world are looking at this guy maybe. with clear eyes saying, OK, this person is insane. This country is insane. We can't deal with them.
We have to move on from relying on them for our defense, from leaning on them for anything. We need to move into a sorry for the turn of phrase, but a new world order. I mean, that is what we are actually living in now. And that speech from Prime Minister Mark Carney, I think, was incredibly significant in shifting into that mindset.
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Chapter 3: How are the Danes reacting to Trump's Greenland plans?
I would say somewhere. Up until around the 1970s, I do think things explicitly switched after the Cold War ended, and that's when the unipolar moment ultimately became the detriment of the United States. Well, yes, we allegedly became richer on paper. Our trade deals bankrupted and destroyed most of our manufacturing base, and we became basically the world's policemen.
This culminates in the invasion of of Iraq and the occupation of Afghanistan, which drained our resources and then eventually transforms into some literal liberal world policeman, Libya-style NATO intervention where everything is about humanitarianism.
Chapter 4: What insights does John Mearsheimer provide on geopolitics?
A Canada and a Europe which actually is responsible for its own defense is a world where the United States is no longer having to put hundreds of billions of dollars into Ukraine. We're not simultaneously having to constantly be concerned with the explicit security arrangements of the Donbass region. So I think these are all great.
And in fact, there was a Maloney video, which we originally were going to play. Apparently it was old, but it was about her saying something like, oh, we're going to close your bases and boycott McDonald's. I'm like, oh, so you're going to threaten me with a good time that we no longer have to forward deployed presence of 800 bases all around the world?
We should have bases only where they actually are strategically important. And we've had tens of thousands of troops, hundreds of thousands actually deployed now around the world for some 70 odd years. President Eisenhower, who is one of my
Chapter 5: What are the implications of the SCOTUS ruling against Trump?
foreign policy lodestars actually wrote in the 1950s, we cannot be a Roman empire with legions deployed abroad to police the world. And it's effectively what we turned into. So to restore some sort of strategic balance to actually have, I mean, to fulfill de Gaulle's dream of like an actually independent Europe, these are good things for Europe, for us, and for everybody.
Well,
Yes, it took Trump to bring some of this in.
The flip side of that, though, is that the deal was we provide all of this world security, and Europe basically doesn't have to invest that much in their own defense. And in exchange for that, the dollar is the world's reserve currency, and that is a massive, incalculable financial benefit to us. And so the debt and the deficits that we run consistently, those are not possible.
All true. All true.
if we are not the world's reserve currency. And so if that contract is broken, which is what this basically signifies, and not that this all happens immediately, not that NATO is totally over and all of that, but that is the world that we, everyone is acknowledging that we're moving towards now. then that is going to that is going to have a massive economic impact on the U.S.
There is going to be a reckoning. So, you know, as as someone I said this to Jeffrey Sachs when we talked to him, like even in spite of myself, I can't help but have some American nationalistic thoughts.
feelings, I am concerned about that in terms of the globe and the world moving away from this, you know, what has certainly has always in certain senses been a fiction and has been exposed as a total fraud and a lie through our complicity with the Gaza genocide and Europe's complicity and Canada's complicity, by the way. But moving away from that is not going to be without pain for us.
But I do think that that is, I'm excited to talk to Mearsheimer about this and see if he sees it the same way, but that is increasingly the world we're moving towards. Not just the speech from Mark Carney, the deal that he struck with China, incredibly significant.
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Chapter 6: How has Trump's rhetoric affected international relations?
Yeah. You know, Matt Stoller has long said that being the world's reserve currency is a bad deal for Americans, obviously. I mean, look, it's of two things because, like you said, we can do infinite debt deficit finance. But it also means that our Federal Reserve works on behalf of the global banking system and not on behalf of Americans.
Chapter 7: What is the significance of the new book on sports gambling?
You could compare it, let's say, to the British Empire in 1940s or the famous 1945 war. Immediately, like while Potsdam is happening, you have two different visions from the Churchillian vision of like the empire will stand and Attlee and others are like, no, we just fought this horrific world war.
Like we are no longer going to be policing, you know, India and whatever, all of our different colonies. Like we want health care, like we want a national health service. We all need to decide like on our core strategic interests and like we ourselves are going to be. So you're talking about the deal.
The other side of that deal is one reason that we don't ā we have an extremely weak social welfare state is because we have 800, 900 bases all across the world. The Europeans, the only reasons they all get to get universal healthcare is because we pay for all of their defense. Like it's a fraudulent system in almost every single regard. There are pluses and minuses.
There will definitely be a period of transition like there was for the UK as well to continue down this road. A3, shall we put that up on the screen? NATO has, quote, no mandate whatsoever to negotiate on behalf of Greenland. This is from the Greenlandic MP who said on Facebook, quote, the idea that NATO should have any say at all over our country and our mineral resources is completely absurd.
That is another element which I just think, you know, was driving me crazy about this whole thing. Denmark, you know, negotiating with the United States over middle rights in Greenland, which is allegedly a self-governing territory, but it gave up its own foreign affairs. It's like it is genuinely ruled by the kingdom of Denmark.
And then NATO itself coming and say, oh, well, we'll negotiate with you over the rights over this territory. Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What happened during the incident involving tear gas and a baby?
It just gives ā again, I just ā I can never let it go that there is a lot of fictions about rules and they're like, oh, you're challenging our sovereignty. I'm like, well, you literally rule over these people. They only got self-determination like eight years ago or something like that in terms of their own constitution. They're your subjects for hundreds of years.
So let's all not pretend as if your naked imperialism is not like a footnote in this conversation.
Sure. Sure. But I mean, and yes, to have I mean, imagine if NATO came in over our heads and was like, yes, here's the deal we did on your behalf. That's right. Like, who are you, Mark? Like, what are you talking about? So that is the reaction that was from one member of parliament. The prime minister has now come out and said similar things.
I mean, again, I don't even know what this deal really is, because it appears to me to be things that already existed. So maybe they won't, you know, object to strenuously since it's basically some like speculation. face-saving deal for Trump so that all of his sycophants can go out and be like, oh, look, art of the deal, isn't he brilliant, blah, blah, blah.
So anyway, I mean, with regard to what the people of Greenland actually want, judging by the polling and what I've seen there, there was definitely a movement within the country, and this is very, I mean, we're talking, what, 56,000 people? This is a very small population. But in any case, there was a movement of interest in true independence from Denmark.
However, with this threat from the U.S., that seems like it's really been put on hold. And it's like, listen, we would much rather stay with Denmark than go with the U.S. And there was a clip that went viral where one of their politicians was saying, look, we don't aspire to American culture. There's all kinds of TikToks of them making fun of like, you know, doing the fentanyl.
They're like, we don't want bums addicted to fentanyl in our streets. I've never felt more affinity for the Greenlandic people. I'm like, I'm with you, all right?
The soccer's moving to Greenland. Be free. Stay away from us. But in addition, she was like, look, we get free health care. We get free, not just like, you know, through high school, public education, we get free college. In fact, if we want to go and study in college, we get a stipend to support like our living needs. So they're like, we've got a pretty good deal here.
Definitely better than what's on offer from the United States. And culturally, they were not really feeling it either. So in any case, you know, to the extent that the wants and concerns of Greenlanders. Is that what they're called? Greenlanders? I don't know. I apologize. The people of Greenland. To the extent that that matters at all, that seems to be where they are by and large.
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