American here (not a Trump fan).

There’s three things we should be looking at IMHO.

First- Trump is a publicity man, an actor. He understands the camera.

Think of a magic show. You have the magician and the cute assistant in a swimsuit. So when they set up the trick the assistant is flourishing her hands and dancing over the stage to distract you from noticing that the magician palmed your card instead of shuffling it back into the deck.

Trump understands this. And he knows how to play both the magician and the assistant.

So if he says something wild like this, understand he WANTS attention on that statement, which probably means he DOESN’T want attention on something else. Like Epstein. If those files have any kind of actual proof he partook in Epstein’s services, there’s a good chance that an impeachment might actually succeed to conviction. Because it’s easy to ‘stand with your party leader’, it’s a lot harder to say ‘yes I stand by my vote that the guy in the picture with his dick in a 14yo girl should stay President’.

Point being- whenever Trump says something outrageous like this, your first question should be 'what DOESN’T he want me paying attention to?

Second- understand that USA literally cannot annex Greenland by force. Greenland is a territory of Denmark, and Denmark is a member of NATO. If the US invades Denmark, all other NATO companies are OBLIGATED to provide military support. So that would basically kick USA out of NATO, and you can bet your bottom dollar that not only NATO but also Russia, China, North Korea, etc would all fall over themselves to ‘help respect and defend the sovereign territory of Denmark from illegal invasion’. That very quickly becomes a ‘US vs Rest Of World’ war and even with our giant military there’s NO chance we win against the entire rest of the planet combined. Plus militarily we would be isolated, ostracized from the world economy.

Americans understand this. Our government understands this. Congress understands this. Even if Trump does not, Congress would not authorize such a war.

As for tariffs- Congress is much more hesitant to curtail Trump’s tariff powers, but their tolerance has a limit (somewhere). It’s one thing to enact tariffs ‘to protect American manufacturing’, they’ll generally tolerate a ‘good faith’ effort like that. But when the tariff becomes punitive to countries that aren’t supporting an annexation that obviously isn’t going to happen, I think Congress might step in.

Third- While this all may well be a distraction or a strategy, it is doing actual harm to our international relations. If I was a citizen of EU, AU, Asia, etc, I would be saying 'the US can no longer be trusted to lead the world economy, the rest of the world needs to find a solution where the US is ‘one among many’ not calling the shots. And a big part of that would likely be a different worldwide reserve currency. Because right now this is like being on a bus where every few minutes the driver jokes about swerving in front of an oncoming semi truck- even if he won’t do it, you still don’t want to be on that bus.

What this also means is that the next Presidential election is important not just for American internal politics but for determining what our place in the world will be going forward. While Trump is ineligible to be re-elected, I think it’s important that the US send a clear message this isn’t the sort of statesmanship that we want representing us. That DOESN’T mean blindly vote blue. It means vote in primaries, vote for candidates who act like statesmen.