Americanswers… Why has Denmark made a deal with Trump over Greenland?

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1:07Can Donald Trump ban journalists he doesn't like from covering him in the White House? And what are other media outlets going to do in response to his attempt to do so? He's announced a new security compact with Denmark and Greenland, but is it any different from what the existing arrangements were before he announced that he wanted to buy Greenland. And why does he want to put snipers on top of the huge triumphal arch that he's building in Washington, D.C.? Well, those are just some of your questions. There are more as well that we're going to attempt to answer. Welcome to AmeriCast.

1:42Anthony Zurcher:AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league. The tide is coming. And this time We intend to win it all. See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. When I'm not around, you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.

2:21Hello, it's Sarah in New York, where the UN General Assembly is meeting this week.

2:26Marianna Spring:And it is Marianna in London.

2:27Anthony Zurcher:And it's Anthony at my home in Arlington, Virginia.

2:30Marianna Spring:Now, I didn't want to say I was in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast because I'm in a different studio today in London. And that would have been fake news. And on the topic of fake news, that is one of the things that we're going to be talking about today because we've had some questions about it, specifically about the accusations Donald Trump makes about the media being fake news. Tricia in London has emailed us saying, Can Trump block press access to the White House? It seems to me this has happened before in the early days of his second term and the Supreme Court didn't stop it. Something along the lines of the White House can invite whom they like.

3:03Marianna Spring:And then also Richard in Fiverr said, Why don't all reporting outlets in the US get together and just don't turn up to DT conferences in force? Now, this is about this ban, isn't it, Sarah? CNN and others who have now been excluded from attending the White House and being part of the pool. Yeah, Marianna, all of a sudden on Friday afternoon, Donald Trump posted on social media that he was banning certain media outlets from the White House. And they were CNN, MS Now and Politico. He didn't give any specific reason except claiming that they all report fake news and that they're deliberately mean to him that they don't report his achievements accurately, that they're always being particularly critical.

3:44And it wasn't immediately clear what he meant by banning them from the White House, but he was asked about it by reporters in the Oval Office just a few minutes after he'd posted that online. Earlier today, you posted that you intend to ban CNN, Politico, and MS Now from the White House. Every president takes an oath to uphold the Constitution, which includes the First Amendment. I do too. How do you justify... Much more so than you. Because they're fake news. You get so tired of reading and seeing fake news. When you look at CNN, it's just fake. That's why their ratings are no good. When you look at MSNOW, which used to be MSNBC, which some people call MSDNC, Democratic National Committee, it's fake news.

4:35Many, many, look at this story today about favored nations on drugs. if we lowered the drug causes by 50, 60, 70 percent, they won't even put it, if they put it on, it'll be a negative. They will find a reason why that's a negative, OK? But you're not doing this ban now. Is there a particular reason? No, no reason. No, just because, no, no, it's really just cumulative stories over the last few years. You get sick of it. And here's the CNN White House reporter Betsy Kline on trying to get into the White House on Saturday. So I walk in, I tap my badge, and it beeps a couple of different times. It turns red, blue, and green, and it didn't accept my PIN number.

5:20The Secret Service agent in the guardhouse, with whom I have been friendly in the past, asked to see my badge, and I handed it over to him. He told me that it had been deactivated. I asked if I could have the badge back. He said he would be keeping it. He did, however, hand me back this clear case with a lanyard that it came in. I also collected my things and then returned out the gate that I had come through. And so, Anthony, it wasn't at all clear that there was any specific report or incident that had triggered President Trump to do this, was there?

5:51Anthony Zurcher:No, you heard it from Donald Trump's own mouth there that he was just frustrated at the news. Now, whether you believe Donald Trump that is the reason or not, I guess it's up to you. You can look at the context of this, the timing of this, which is Don Roth has had a rough few weeks. He had a setback with the Kennedy Center where a judge told him that he can't put his name on it. There were issues with interest rates being raised by his handpicked appointee to chair the Federal Reserve. He is facing poll numbers that show that the Republican Party is in trouble. In November's midterm elections.

6:31Anthony Zurcher:The Iran war still hasn't reached a resolution. Gas prices are still high. So maybe that was all weighing on him and even watching the news coverage and finally had had enough. But I will say that Tricia talks about earlier this in Trump's term, Trump doing something similar. That was an Associated Press decision not to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. And the White House had limited AP wire reporters from being in the pool, which travels around with the president both locally and around the world and around the country. That is quantitatively different than what is happening here, where CNN reporters, Politico reporters can't even get onto the grounds, as we heard from Betsy Kline, can't even get on the grounds of the White House.

7:21Anthony Zurcher:They're having their passes taken and they're being denied full access to the White House. that AP lawsuit that came out of the decision, that's still unresolved. And AP wire reporters have been able to access some pool, but they've made some changes in how wire reporters, they just don't have seats in the pool anymore. So they have to kind of apply as print reporters as well. So it's a somewhat different scenario. But here, this seems like something major and a very significant break from how the White House has dealt with the press in the past, even Donald Trump. And unsurprisingly, CNN and these other outlets are going to go to court over this and insist that they should have the right to access the White House.

8:03Is it a constitutional right, Anthony, the freedom of the press?

8:07Anthony Zurcher:Well, you know, the First Amendment says that you cannot bridge the freedom of the press. So the way the courts have interpreted that is that the government cannot discriminate against media outlets based on what they're saying, whether they're being too critical or the kinds of stories they're running. So while in theory the president could deny access to all the press from the White House, stop having pool reporters travel around with him. That would be a huge political issue, but not necessarily a legal issue. But when Donald Trump starts saying, explicitly saying, these people can't come with me because I don't like the press coverage.

8:45Anthony Zurcher:I don't like what they're saying on air. It does seem like this is something that CNN and Politico and MSNOW, they'll have a legal case. And in the past, judges and even the Supreme Court have ruled that that kind of discrimination discrimination is unconstitutional. So we'll have to wait and see how this plays out in the courts. But this is definitely they they have a case that that is worth pursuing and they could very well win.

9:12Marianna Spring:How symptomatic do you both think this is of the changing relationship between politicians, I guess specifically the president and the mainstream or traditional or professional media, however we sort of want to call it, including ourselves. Because it strikes me that Donald Trump kind of knows the possible repercussions of this in terms of it reducing, although in the short term you get a lot of pick-up about the decision, broadly that might mean that journalists kind of disengage with you or don't cover what you're doing quite so readily and quickly and you don't get the exposure, good or bad, that comes with media scrutiny and journalism.

9:53Marianna Spring:but maybe now he thinks, well, actually the social media world I caught of the streamers and the podcasters is more valuable to me than a media outlet sitting in a briefing or following me around or being part of the pool. I don't know what either of you think about that. Well, it's definitely true that politicians have direct access to the public and to voters via social media and other new media outlets. And I mean, it's worth noting that one of the first things they did with the press office when Donald Trump came back into office was to give a specific seat in the briefing room to new media.

10:27And they invite a different new media organisation in each day. They get to ask the first question. And, you know, they're widely perceived in many cases to be much more friendly to the president, some of the outlets that they allow in. But I think Donald Trump is probably in a unique position. I don't know if you would agree with this, Mariana, that it's just impossible to imagine us not finding out what he thinks and what he's saying, whether that's via other outlets who haven't been banned from the White House, reporting it, whether it's because it comes across on social and new media. It's just the idea of silencing him somehow or other and us not having almost constant access to what he's saying, doing and thinking just seems unimaginable.

11:10That wouldn't necessarily be true for other politicians who are not quite so dominant in the world or across the media. Yeah.

11:17Marianna Spring:And then I guess the argument would be that actually Donald Trump would think that he will continue to receive the level of attention he does regardless. And so this is an attempt to assert his opinion or some may argue sort of undermine the credibility of these outlets.

11:30Anthony Zurcher:And there's an interesting development just this morning, Monday morning. CNN was supposed to be the television pooler for Donald Trump's trip to New York. That means that it's a CNN camera, a CNN producer, a CNN sound person who is going to get on Air Force One, fly to New York, follow Trump, follow him around for all of these events. And because they're in the pool, they share that video with everyone. So when the BBC, if you turn on BBC News and see the president talking, it would be because there was a pool camera. In today's case, it should have been CNN recording that. That is not happening now.

12:06Anthony Zurcher:CNN has been banned from traveling with the president as the pool outlet, the television pool. And at least for today, there's no substitute. None of the other networks have stepped up to say that they're going to be fulfilling that duty. So at least for one day, there's not going to be that camera that's on the tarmac when Donald Trump gets on and off Air Force One. There's not going to be that camera following him around to his meeting with Zofran Mamdani. Now, there may be other cameras that are pre-stationed in places, but the television pool gets up close and personal. And a lot of the times you see Donald Trump talking to the media, he's talking to the pool reporters.

12:47Anthony Zurcher:the television camera, to the print reporters, to the sound people, like the radio people, like me and my colleagues who are asking him those questions. So yes, Donald Trump has a lot of access, but at least for today, one of his favorite methods of getting in front of a camera, that camera is not going to be there. It'll be really interesting to see if this is the case going forward. And that does get to the question that Richard asked, which was whether the media that covers Trump, the White House press organization, all of the reporters that go spend time like you and I, Sarah, at the White House, whether they can come up with some sort of collective action to respond to what Donald Trump is doing, at least for today, for the television pool, which is a much smaller group of outlets, only five, it seems to the answer is yes.

13:36Marianna Spring:Also, he's meeting one of the other most social media savvy politicians, Ezra Mandani, who you can imagine will also generate and share quite a lot of his own content about this. And whether that then dictates the online narrative versus, say, what Donald Trump could have said to camera, or I guess his own content, content that comes out of the White House, is quite interesting. On the days when one of the networks like ABC, CBS, Fox or NBC were the rotored TV pool. We don't know whether they're going to refuse to do that or whether they're only going to refuse to fill in behind CNN. And there will still be newspaper print, Pula's traveling with the president, and there will still be somebody covering for the radio.

14:16So we'll be able to hear what the president says. We just won't be able to see him saying it. And yeah, and it remains to be seen what the situation is going to be going forward. If there was no television coverage of Donald Trump getting on and off Air Force One, taking questions in the Oval Office, I suspect he would probably have to rethink this pretty quickly. Don't you think, Anthony?

14:37Anthony Zurcher:Yeah, I think, you know, he may like talking to print reporters and radio poolers like us, but the reality is he loves the camera. And, you know, if he came back on Air Force One flying to New York and wanted to talk to the press, there's no camera there. You see the video of the president standing in the plane talking to reporters that there's not going to be video for that. And if there's no video for that today and maybe even going forward, I think that that might make the president change his mind pretty quickly. The thing to keep in mind, as you say, Sarah, there are five major outlets that have television cameras and the resources to travel with the president to be able to send the video out to everyone else over the system that has been set up.

15:22Anthony Zurcher:It's not cheap. There's three seats on Air Force One, three spots in the pool. The big networks, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, that's pretty much it. Now, maybe you could fill in with some right wing television networks, but they don't have the capability to to be able to do this on a day in and day out basis, both technologically and financially.

15:46Marianna Spring:OK, next question we've had from Dale from Bexhill. He asks, how much in practical terms is the deal between Denmark, the US and Greenland actually new? It seems very much like the old deal with some very minor adjustments. Is this the best way of dealing with Trump, simply wrapping old gifts in new paper? And then Greg in Denmark has asked, can you explain why Denmark didn't turn to Europe, NATO instead for security? It seems as though Denmark has caved.

16:14Anthony Zurcher:Those are both very good questions. And we still haven't seen the full details of what this agreement means in practice and how it is different than just the normal security guarantees that the United States already has. Greg, you ask why Denmark didn't turn to Europe and NATO. Well, the United States is a member of NATO and the United States has been providing security for Greenland through NATO already. Donald Trump in his Truth Social post says that this gives this agreement gives the United States permanent control over security and all other needs. We don't know what that means in Greenland and completely addresses all of the many U.S.

16:51Anthony Zurcher:concerns. And it is forever and it will prevent other countries like China and Russia from entering Greenland and extracting resources and striking deals. that no adversary can ever have a military presence in Greenland or make sensitive investments without the express written approval of the United States. So maybe it gives the United States a little more control over the economic factors here. But militarily, it doesn't seem like a whole lot has changed, has it, Sarah? No. One of the things that we understand is in the agreement is a provision saying that the deal would not expire even if Greenland became an independent country in the future.

17:28But as you say, Anthony, we haven't seen the full text of it. So it's very difficult to compare it directly to what the situation was. I think it's a little bit unfair to ask why Greenland didn't turn to Europe. This became a very big deal between a lot of European countries and the EU with Donald Trump. It was one of the first ways in which there were some pretty significant fissures between leaders like Macron in France, Keir Starmer in the UK with Donald Trump, because they pushed back very hard on his desire to take over Greenland. That was, you know, even when people weren't 100 percent sure how serious he was about this, they made it very clear that this was not something that they were prepared to countenance in any way at all.

18:12And it was one of the first ways in which we saw people standing up to Donald Trump and him getting really, really irritated with leaders who actually had been able to manage quite good relationships with him up until that point.

18:23Anthony Zurcher:Yes, sir. You remember German troops went to Greenland after Donald Trump started kind of rattling his sabers and suggesting that maybe the United States had a military option in order to annex Greenland. So there was a European security response. And what this agreement doesn't do is it doesn't give the United States territorial control over Greenland. It doesn't annex Greenland, which is what Donald Trump said he wanted to do. It doesn't plant the American flag over the breadth of the island, as some of Trump's social media means that he posted showed. And I think to get back to Dale's question, I think it does show perhaps a way that Europe can defuse some of Donald Trump's more out of the box, to put it kindly, ways of looking at the world, that they give him something that he wants, let him claim victory, which is what he's doing, and then hope that it all goes away.

19:18Anthony Zurcher:But there weren't Americans clamoring for American control of Greenland, certainly not during the presidential election. There wasn't, even when Donald Trump started talking about it, wasn't a huge groundswell of interest and support for Donald Trump's efforts to try to take over Greenland. And so I think now that this has been resolved, while the Trump administration may claim it as a victory, they are claiming it as a victory. I don't think Americans are going to care very much one way or the other. OK, we've got another question in from Rachel from Glasgow about another ice shooting that has taken place in Texas.

19:51She says, how much scrutiny is there on ice? Has there been a change in approach? I woke up to hear another person had been killed this time in Texas. Will there be an independent investigation? Very good questions, Anthony.

20:04Anthony Zurcher:Right. The first thing, not killed, shot and wounded. This happened in Austin, in my hometown, on Sunday after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot. and wounded a venezuela man a door dash delivery driver uh in the state capital uh shot in the torso taken the hospital this is what his lawyer has told the u.s media his name is rafael garces perez uh the department of homeland security has issued its own statement to the bbc saying that it's investigating this shooting uh who may or who had entered the country illegally uh this is what the Democratic mayor of Austin, Kirk Watson, had say last night.