Trump Criticizes Foreign Allies

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Some of Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks will appear before the Senate next week. Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined to discuss the tough questions that Democrats are promising.

Meanwhile, as Senate confirmations loom, Trump has taken to criticizing U.S. allies including Canada, Panama, and Greenland. These comments may, in part, be an element of the president-elect’s strategy, Tom Nichols explained last night. “We’re talking about things that are never going to happen: We’re not going to war with Denmark over Greenland; we’re not going to seize the Panama Canal,” he said. “This whole strange foreign-policy fandango has kind of obliterated a lot of other discussions.”

Ahead of his inauguration, Trump has also made many promises about how the government will work once he takes office for his second term. But, as panelists discussed, whether he will be able to deliver, and how his supporters and political opponents could react if he can’t produce his pledged results, remains to be seen.

Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Laura Barrón-López, a White House correspondent for PBS News Hour; Carl Hulse, the chief Washington correspondent at The New York Times; Tom Nichols, a staff writer at The Atlantic; and Vivian Salama, a national-politics reporter at The Wall Street Journal.

Watch the full episode here.