US President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he would not rule out using military or economic coercion to force Panama to give up control of a canal built by America more than a century ago and Denmark to sell Greenland to the United States. .
During the hour-long press conference, Mr. Trump also repeated four times his threat that “hell would break loose in the Middle East” if the hostages held by Hamas were not released by the day of the inauguration.
“If they don't come back by the time I take office, all hell will break loose in the Middle East,” he said. “And it's not going to be good for Hamas, frankly, it's not going to be good for anybody. All hell will break loose. It goes without saying, but that's how it is.”
Mr. Trump did not elaborate during the news conference, where he offered a litany of grievances, complaints and false claims, from the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan to the offshore drilling and criminal charges against him to the size of his election victory.
He refused to rule out using military force to retake the Panama Canal, which was returned to Panama under a treaty in the late 1990s, and Greenland, which Mr. Trump says is necessary for US national security.
“You might have to do something,” he said.
Trump's desire to expand his U.S. footprint is entirely consistent with his mindset of making everything he controls as big as possible, going back to his string of acquisitions in the late 1980s. In recent days, Mr. Trump has repeatedly talked about buying Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal.
It was unclear how seriously the president-elect took some of the comments he made during the press conference. At one point, he proposed that his administration rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
The press conference was a throwback moment for Mr. Trump, who as president has often used similar speeches to seize control of the public narrative with attacks on his opponents and vapid and often false claims about his achievements.
In his speech to reporters, which was described as an announcement of economic development, Mr. Trump criticized President Biden for banning oil drilling in certain waters, said that the special prosecutor investigating him was “perverted” and insulted a New York judge. supervises the criminal case against him.
“This is a sick group of people and it was all about influencing the election,” Mr Trump said. “It was a fight against their political opponent. We have never had this in this country. It happened to us in certain countries. We have seen it in third-level countries.”
Before taking questions, Mr. Trump spoke for more than half an hour without focusing on a single topic. Speaking of Mr Biden's focus on electric cars, he said: “I don't know what's going on with electric. This man loves electricity.” He complained about shower heads with restricted water flow.
“They say rain, it falls from the sky. They also want to do it, but the shower doesn't come out,” he said. “Drip, drop, drop. So what happens is you stay in the shower 10 times longer, you know. There is no water coming out of the faucet.”
He also returned to one of his favorite targets: his hatred of windmills.
“Windmills drive whales crazy,” he said.
The president-elect spoke extensively on foreign policy, criticizing Mr. Biden's war in Ukraine, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the conflict in Israel. He also threatened not to defend NATO allies, a key part of the pact, unless they increased the amount of money they spent on their own defense.
At one point he appeared to confirm a recent report in the Financial Times that suggested he wanted NATO countries to commit to spending up to 5% of their economic output on defence, a significant increase.
He also criticized Canada and said that the country should be a state in the United States due to the economic support given to the country by the United States. He said that he will not use military power to achieve this, but he will use economic power to put pressure on the American neighbor.
“Why do we support a country for 200 million plus a year?” he told reporters. “Our army is at their disposal for everything else. They should be the state. That's what I said when Trudeau came down.
Mr. Trump has threatened to use “economic power” to join Canada and the United States together, implying that the United States will roll back purchases of Canadian products.
He also said that Denmark would “apply very high tariffs” if it did not give Greenland to the US.
During the press conference, Mr. Trump was told that a federal judge had blocked special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating his actions on January 6 and his handling of classified documents, from releasing a report on the investigation.
“So if it's not allowed to report, so be it,” he said. “Why should he be allowed to write a false report? It will just be a fake report. This is great news.”