The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Trump’s New World Disorder with Adam Tooze and Ivan Krastev
21 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What does Trump's interest in Greenland reveal about his worldview?
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Weekly Show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. I'm the host of the Weekly Show podcast, and we are here during exciting times. It is January 20th. I think this is coming out on the 21st, which is the day that Trump lands in Europe. Reverse Mayflower. He's getting on the probably not boat. I would say nuclear power submarine.
and landing at Davos to tell them which parts of Europe he would like. The Whitman sampler of all that Europe has to offer and what he would be putting in his rucksack and taking back to the United States. We're actually talking to two really just fascinating, I think, experts on Europe and the political scene there. And as it relates to America, we go through
myriad of ideas in terms of is there an actual strategy behind the dismantling of uh the atlantic alliances and maybe moving away from this whole uh i don't know what you would call it liberal democracy model which has so so been an albatross around america's neck for so long uh so we're gonna get to adam twos and ivan krastev We're jumping right in today, guys.
As I've always promised on this podcast, we are nothing if not reacting to the day's news, even though we only have it once a week. We are here in an astonishing moment in history. We have Ivan Krastev, who is the chairman, Center for Liberal Strategies, located in Bulgaria. Also...
by the way, founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, which may come in handy right around now when we're looking to foreignly relate to the EU. And also our good friend, Adam Tooze, you obviously know his chart book, Substack. And by the way, gentlemen, Welcome. Thank you for having us. I don't want to jump in with the excitement, but my God, Adam, you're in Davos.
Yeah. And you just had a panel. Tell us a little bit as we get started on your panel that you held in Davos. And then we can talk about what the breakfast, what the continental breakfast is there, the types of pastries.
The dark secret of Davos is the catering sucks. So it is not the honeypot that you're promised. It is brutal. That is stunning. It is brutal. It is brutal. This is the sensational piece of information in this podcast.
That's going to get pickup, Adam. That's getting pickup. You do not come here for the luxury entertaining.
I would have thought hot and cold running muesli. Am I wrong?
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Chapter 2: How is the international order being dismantled since World War II?
So gift to moderator- Mr. Commerce Secretary, on the one hand, I hear all the Berlin energy, and then I hear this note of menace. How would you anticipate Europeans, who are not fundamentally differently wired than you, reacting to this kind of mixture? That didn't go very well. And he went off down his track, and then I brought him back.
And he just point blank refuses to ask questions about Greenland and about the Fed. Can I bring you back to Greenland?
No.
It's unnecessary. The Western hemisphere is vital for the United States of America. Our national security people are on it, and they care about it. And I'm going to leave it to them to address with our allies, with our friends, and with everyone how they work it out. But the Western hemisphere matters to the United States of America.
And the United States of America, as I've just articulated, really, really matters to the world. When America shines, the world shines, because they all need to make sure America is strong and powerful. to take care of them, God forbid. And so I think America and the Western Hemisphere are vital to America, and I'm going to leave that to my national security people to address.
Right. It was as brutal a kind of, you know, pulling down the roller blinds as I've seen on a panel like this. It's very unusual because it lays you open, right? It's not really the more sophisticated way of just absorbing it would have been to roll with a hit and to give some kind of spiel.
No, he shuts it down. You know, it's incredible for someone to refer to themselves as the hammer and then be presented with nails and say... Oh, no, no, no.
No, no, no. Other people do nails.
What I saw from Lutnick was, no, no, no, that's not my – I defer to my colleagues in the international departments. Now, Yvonne, I want to bring you in here. You've been observing this for years. You are the author of the book After Europe. I'm assuming you are working, as we speak, on After America, the sequel – to after Europe.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Trump's actions on European alliances?
I would agree with Ivan that this does seem like a moment where Europe might finally start moving down that route. They have this thing called the anti-coercion instrument, which was of course devised for China and Russia, because the Europeans were worried about rare earth type moves or gas cutoffs from the Russians. And Ursula von der Leyen, I think, no, it was Macron that said it today.
Like if we use that instrument against America, the world is topsy-turvy.
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that Europe will, I mean, this is part of Trump's strategy is he believes Western Europe, the liberal Europe, you know, to Trump, France is gay. That's his problem with all of this. Like he doesn't like enlightenment Europe. He likes Hungary Europe. He likes the right-wing authoritarian Europe.
And in some respects, isn't what he's doing further weakening what we consider to be Enlightenment Europe and empowering, I won't even say Maloney. I think he's gone much further than that, but empowering Orban and the others. And isn't it maybe more likely that that his theater further weakens people like Macron and Starmer and strengthens the illiberal leaders.
Listen, this is, I believe, his major mistake. Because, of course, there is, particularly in the eastern part of Europe, people who like his anti-immigration policy. As you know, Eastern Europe is not particularly the place where sexual minorities are adored. But... Greenland is different. Listen, it's about land. It's about territory. And here's the problem.
Most of these people on the far, on European far right, they're nationalists, which means they know their history and they believe that land is sacred. And he has a real estate view of land. They're not like this. One of the paradoxes that if it was about any type of a work or if it was about migration, he was going to have an allies. Now, his allies are silent.
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Chapter 4: What role does Europe play in resisting authoritarianism?
He loves the glitz of Paris. He can tell.
Well, he likes Scotland because he has golf courses there. But if Scotland didn't let him build, he would hate Scotland.
He appreciates good guilt work and he knows you can't get it in the US and they have it in spades in Paris. And his mate Macron, who's a bit of a player, actually kind of digs him, which is why he's saying like, Donald, what's wrong? What are you doing in Greenland? I don't understand. But I think there is a faction in the Trump, which is really down the East European, Hungarian side.
Adam, you're right, but it's different about him. Because normally, this is about legacy probably, but he cannot trust that when he's going to die, they're going to make all this naming after him. And this is the interesting story. This is a person who wants to give the speech on his funeral. No question. And this is very important. He wants to do it for himself.
And this is why, in my view, his understanding of time is very interesting. I remember when he was talking about what they have discussed with the Chinese president, he said, she promised me that he's not going to attack Taiwan while I'm in power.
I do believe this is important because on the other side, for how long you're going to live, how long you're going to be in power, this is changing dramatically. I do believe we're totally underestimating the importance, for example, of the famous Putin-Xi talk about we're going to live 250 years. There is something happening with the idea of time.
And this is why he's so, on one level, exceptional, but on the other level, symptomatic for something that is beyond him. And this is why trying to focus psychologically on Trump, in my view, we're making a mistake.
It was so interesting hearing the Chinese vice premier today who gave the Chinese calm and they have these extraordinarily technocratic senior politicians. I literally sat and took a note, Yvonne, which was they have this idea of the flow and the tide of history. And the Chinese have this intact, coherent, modernist kind of vision.
And if you do Trumpy things, the real problem with them is not that they're bad or wrong. It's just they're out of keeping with the time and history will punish you. And this obviously is just completely disintegrated in the Trump camps.
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Chapter 5: How do Eastern and Western Europeans perceive Trump's policies?
You cannot be conspiracy theorist anymore unless you believe that he goes there for democracy and just talks about oil.
And then Exxon shows up and says, we can't invest there.
Exactly. It's like, what? But what he's not understanding is that hypocrisy, of course, was awful and many of the people hated it. But also hypocrisy is a constraint. Because I'm saying that I go for democracy, I should do certain things. And there are certain things that I will not do.
And from this point of view, this is in my view changing dramatically because what Trump does not understand, he is every revolutionary leader, does not respect borders. Talking to the French judges, for sure. Other American diplomats have been talking probably to French judges during the Cold War too.
But normally, you are telling to the people, do it because we're going to invite you on our party. And his major story is, I'm doing just for the Americans. I don't care about any of you. And this is an interesting story. This is a major change. For the first time, you have a kind of a major radical way to change the order.
And at the same time, he's not telling anybody else that they can benefit from this. A colleague of mine, an American colleague of mine, told me something that is right or wrong, but I believe that it resonated strongly with me. He said, it's not by accident that the only business in which Trump really felt spectacularly was the casino business.
Because in the casino business, in order to make money, you at least should try to create the illusions that others are winning. And for him, allowing others to win is psychologically unacceptable. And what he didn't like about the liberal order was that if America is so powerful, why we're not getting the spoils?
If we have taken the city, why basically we are not allowed to do in the city everything we want?
But Yvonne, within that though, in what world can we argue that the last 80 years, America hasn't taken the spoils? We may not have a distributed very well throughout our population where we have tremendous inequality and lots of poverty, but who's done better?
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Chapter 6: What does the panel at Davos say about the future of democracy?
But I want to talk about, you say, well, there were flaws in terms of globalization and clearly maybe letting China into the WTO or- allowing capital to travel so easily when labor couldn't and not figuring out a way to make that a more, ameliorate the kind of downside of that for the American worker, which I wholeheartedly agree with.
But reforms to that system could have so strengthened it rather than destroying it because the system they appear to be going back to, and this is really what I think people need to understand,
The system we're going back to in terms of exploiting resources rather than even sharing the benefits in a slightly less fair way, I don't think people understand how much it takes for an empire, what you have to expend to exploit resources because those other countries want to be free too. Venezuela wants to be free too. All of them.
And the fact that we think, oh, we're the biggest, so we'll go in and we'll exploit Greenland and we'll exploit Venezuela, and that people's resentment doesn't have a cost to goods and services seems nuts.
You know, you're touching on something critically important, at least from my point of view. Paradoxically, Trump does not understand nationalism. So himself talks about this and that. And yet uses it very well. Because he basically really cannot understand that the more you talk about Venezuelan oil, for the Venezuelans, this becomes the major issue. It became the magic things.
The resource nationalism does not come from nowhere. And from this point of view, he's basically fueling the forces that are going to create a problem for the world that he wants to create. Because all these people, even Denmark... Listen, this is absolutely amazing with Denmark. If you look at Denmark, Denmark should be one of the very few European countries that he likes.
Paradoxically, there is a certain nostalgia in all this Trumpian movement, and this is very much based on social cohesion, immigration, whiteness. Paradoxically, Denmark is one of the countries that he should love most. This was a country which basically was quite effective in protecting their borders. Secondly, this is a country with a lot of social cohesion.
This is a country that was a very important American ally, so full loading is not there. Basically, the soldiers have been dying in Afghanistan and they have been dying out of solidarity with the United States, not because there was a problem for Denmark itself.
Boy, they stood next to America, no question.
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Chapter 7: How does Trump's approach to foreign policy differ from traditional methods?
Disintegrations is not a funny game. It's not a funny game. But of course, there is also this other wing of the Republican Party, and I do believe this is why people like Macron and von der Leyen and of course Merz, they understand that when it comes to Greenland, They are not facing America. They are not even facing the Republican Party. They are facing Trump and small group around him.
They do believe that even in this administration, there are people for whom NATO is a value, and losing NATO is against American national interest. So this is why they are going to be, in my view, much more assertive than in other situations.
Ivan, if you're impressed by how Europe can capitulate to Trump, let me introduce you to the Republican Party. Because if you ever want to see somebody sublimate to their dear leader, and isn't it though, in talking about that, Adam, I'm curious what you think about this. If the idea, like, so let's say there is an end game here that they view it as,
If I can get Russia to decouple from China, that's better for me than if the EU is strong and productive. I mean, if the United States has to defend Greenland alone, somehow that's better than defending it with 32 other countries. But OK, that's fine. How naive is it?
to think that Russia would ever decouple from China in an honest and real way and somehow align itself as a great friend of the United States. And why would we want that anyway?
No, I mean, I think there is a real, I mean, I love Ivan's mapping of this is delirious. It is fascinating. But I mean, don't we have to talk about the Norway letter? I mean, and the silence about the Norway letter.
I mean, this is like- When he says the Norway letter, he's referring to Trump wrote Norway and said, I don't even care about your Nobel Peace Prize, but since you didn't give it to me, I now don't have to be a man of peace.
And actually goes further. He says, now I don't have to care about universal peace. Now I can care just about America. He actually... This goes to this weird relationship. And actually, he literally says, now I can be America first, right? Because previously I was doing the peace thing and because you... And I mean, it's so... Ludicrous.
And the overwhelming, what we've seen here at Davos is that people just are tight-lipped, are shut down about the evident fact that this man to whom they swear a kind of personal loyalty and fealty is... is childlike and basically crazy. I agree with Ivan, there may be strategic groups that want to use this for the purpose of the grand rearrangement that you're talking about.
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Chapter 8: What are the potential consequences of Trump's strategies on global relations?
It's worth saying there's one really depressing thing going on, which is that people are leaving before Trump gets here. which is another way of responding to this border, which is to say, no, I don't have to sit on the edge of this. I don't want to be part of the spectacle. I don't want to be dragged into this. I don't have to be here. And that is a kind of withdrawal.
It's very ambiguous, right? Because it doesn't necessarily dispose. The Europeans are going to meet on Thursday. There's everything to play for. But one of the things that's happening is that kind of stepping away. And people are making choices literally today because we know what kind of security is going to happen and it's going to be mad.
And there's one faction which is leaving and there's another faction which is basically going to get locked into the conference center tomorrow. And live with all of the insane American security. Because the physical, other leaders come and go in Davos and there's a bad bubble around them. Ivan will know this well. But they don't change the whole thing.
The Americans tomorrow are going to put their boot print on the entire show. And you can either choose to not be there for it or I'm not, this is no kind of heroics. Like it's just literally who's going to be part of the Trump sleepover and who not. And some of us are going to stay for the authoritarian sleepover show that is going to come descend on this place tomorrow.
Adam, do you think the buffet is going to get better with the Americans in town, or do you think it's still going to be wanting?
No, the Chinese, I think, are doing the buffet tomorrow evening, and that is the buffet, I'm afraid. As you would imagine, that is the buffet that you want to be at.
Gentlemen, I can't think of a better note to end on than the fact that the Chinese right now, in the world as it stands, provide the best buffet.
And I think America is going to need... I only hope that Europeans are not going to do the dishes again.
That's the problem. Trump sees no peers at Davos. He sees only Putin and Xi as his peers. They are the only ones. Everyone else is working in the kitchen. Gentlemen, thank you so much. What an interesting conversation. It's going to be really wild to see how this is going to turn over the next week. Adam Tooze, author of Chartbook Substack. Ivan Krastev, chairman, Center for Liberal Strategies.
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