President Donald Trump’s ex-White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews is condemning his obsession with annexing Greenland, calling the controversial quest “the most mentally ill, deranged thing” Trump has pursued in his second term.
Appearing Monday on a panel on MS NOW’s “The Weeknight,” Matthews, who served in Trump’s first administration before resigning following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, blasted Trump for his threats against the autonomous Danish territory.
“Yeah, I don’t say this lightly. I think this might be the most mentally ill, deranged thing that Donald Trump has done to date, to be threatening our allies and wanting to go to war, potentially over Greenland, when his reasoning doesn’t even make sense,” she said.
Trump has claimed that “we need Greenland because Russia and China will take over Greenland if we don’t,” she pointed out, “but then he invites [Russian President] Vladimir Putin to sit on his [Gaza] Board of Peace. Make it make sense for me, because it doesn’t make any sense.”
“There’s plenty of other solutions we could do with the Danish government if we wanted more minerals, for example. But Trump is not doing that,” she added.
Trump’s targeting of Greenland has sparked widespread pushback from European leaders and allies who’ve argued that the annexation of the territory would shatter the NATO alliance. Trump threatened last week to punish countries that don’t back his move to take control of Greenland with tariffs.
Matthews argued that the president’s pursuit of Greenland has “frustrated” his supporters “because people did not vote for him to take over Greenland.”
“They voted for him because they wanted more affordable health care. They wanted lower costs of groceries at the grocery store. They want to be able to buy a home. And these are not the things he’s prioritizing.”
She urged voters to “call upon” their congressional representatives to push back and lauded Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) for having the “most spine” in the GOP for standing up to Trump on the issue.
Praising Bacon for declaring that Trump could be impeached if he moves forward with annexing Greenland, she said, “That’s the type of language that we need to be seeing from other Republicans.”
“The American people need to be putting the pressure on their members of Congress and saying, ‘We don’t support this’ because public polling shows that Americans don’t support this and they don’t want to see this,” she added.
Matthews’ remarks on MS NOW’s “The Weeknight” begin at the 3:30 mark below.
