Trump Announces Greenland Pact to Block Rival Bases; Plans AI Force | 9/21/26 FIRST LOOK

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1:04Hey everybody, I'm Dave AI and this is First Look. It's Monday, September 21st, 2026. We've got a packed show for you today. President Trump announces a deal with Denmark giving the United States permanent control over security in Greenland. Bases, overflights, sensitive investment rules and it holds even if Greenland goes independent. Trump launches an AI force modeled on Space Force and says he will recruit a new AI czar. No stifling the industry, China is the race. Obama and the slowdown crowd want the opposite. Republicans flood NFL and college football with midterm ads, nearly 12 times as many spots as Democrats, chasing the male voters who put Trump over the top in 2024 before and who are slipping now.

1:54Let's dive in. Trump's Greenland deal. President Donald Trump announced late Friday that the United States has reached a deal with Denmark that would give America permanent control over security in Greenland. On Truth Social, he put it in plain language, the U.S. will have the complete ability to do what is necessary in Greenland in order to secure and defend the security of Greenland and the United States of America. A State Department official told Reuters what that means on the ground. Non-MATO countries are prohibited from building a base in Greenland. Only the United States and its allies will be able to make sensitive investments.

2:33The official did not spell out exactly what those investments are. The U.S. gets permanent access, basing, and overflight rights, and those conditions continue even if Greenland becomes independent. Trump's posts did not include every detail. It is not yet clear whether new U.S. bases will be built because of this agreement. Parliamentary action in Denmark and in Greenland is still required before the deal can be enforced. Denmark's Prime Minister, Mette Fredriksen, confirmed the news Friday evening and said the deal is expected to be signed this week. She called it a prospect of a good agreement for Greenland, the Kingdom of Denmark, and the US, and an agreement that strengthens our common security in the Arctic and the North Atlantic area.

3:20Greenland's Prime Minister, Jens Friedrich Nielsen, said it would ensure and strengthen the security of Greenland, Denmark, the United States, and the Western Alliance, to the benefit of us all. Greenland sits northeast of Canada. It is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. About 57 ,000 people live there. The United States has coveted that real estate for more than 150 years. Trump has never been shy about it. He has said owning Greenland is very important for the national security of the United States, Europe, and other parts of the free world. He has even made implicit threats of military action.

3:59The shortest distance between Russia and the United States runs over Greenland. That makes it a critical site for U.S. ballistic missile defense. It already hosts a large American installation, Potufik Space Base. The US military has had de facto military control of Greenland since the Second World War. Trump has repeatedly said there are immediate threats there to the United States and to NATO countries. The map is also changing. Military analyst Sean Bell has noted that trade routes, historically frozen and impassable, most of the year have opened. Cheaper shipping lanes from Europe to Japan are opening around Greenland.

4:40Imran Bayoumi, a former Pentagon official now at the Atlantic Council, complained that Washington could have achieved a lot of these objectives through diplomacy and dialogue without straining the broader U.S.-NATO relationship. That's the blob talking. Trump did not wait for another round of polite workshops while Russia sits across the ice, China looks for Arctic footholds, and new sea lanes open. He locked in permanent U.S. security control, locked out non-NATO basing, and made sure the arrangement survives even if Greenland votes itself out of the Danish kingdom. America first means you do not leave the high north to chance.

5:22Trump's AI force. Over the weekend, President Trump said he is launching a new unit focused on artificial intelligence after leading figures in the industry publicly sounded the alarm. I am forming the AI force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous success in my first term, he wrote on Truth Social. He said he is also recruiting an AI czar. Trump had already appointed investor David Sachs as AI and crypto czar. Sachs stepped down from that title to become co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He remains one of Trump's top advisors on AI policy.

6:04Saturday was the first time the president suggested a new federal entity dedicated solely to AI. It is not yet clear what the unit will do. Other parts of government already touch tech policy, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Commerce, Defense. The Pentagon already has a chief digital and artificial intelligence office. Many agencies are embedding AI into their operations. Space Force, created in Trump's first term, runs the military's space missions. How much money the AI force gets and who leads it is still unanswered. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

6:45Trump's posture is not mysterious. He has been critical of heavy AI regulation. He has been defensive when the sector is attacked. Limited guardrails, he argues, are what you need to stay ahead of China and grow the economy. We will not in any way hinder or stifle the growth of this incredible industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it as it grows. Michael Kratzios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said Sunday on Fox News that the AI force would coordinate agencies working on the issue. He dismissed calls to rein in AI as hysterics and fear-mongering.

7:27Our position is, if you do believe that you're developing a technology that is unsafe or you don't want it out in the world, you can just stop it. You don't need someone to force you to do that. Kratios added that AI will be on the agenda when Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in Washington this week. Tech executives say they still don't know how the new entity will work or who the czar will be. Inside the administration, there are two camps. One group of advisors worries about advancing model capabilities and cyber risk. Another, led by Sachs, wants minimal regulation. Trump has shifted between those camps, which is why the policy can look unpredictable from the outside.

8:12He is expected to meet tech CEOs in the coming days on AI policy. Recently, he called efforts to regulate AI and fears about out-of-control models a hoax. That is not where a lot of voters are heading into the November midterms. A Gallup poll taken in March found nearly half of those surveyed strongly oppose construction of local AI data centers, the buildings that run the models millions of people use every day. Trump clearly sees the politics. In the same truth social burst, he invited followers to vote on what to call the technology. A far more elegant and accurate description of this new phenomena would be superior intelligence, SI, or extreme intelligence, EI, or supreme intelligence, SI.

9:03This is a poll, and I would appreciate everybody voting. Sunday, he refined it. Supreme intelligence, probably because of its relationship to the Supreme Court, is losing badly to both superior and extreme intelligence. Therefore, we are going to take supreme intelligence out, deleting it as a qualifier, and let you vote for the final two, superior intelligence or extreme intelligence. A fresh vote begins now. On the other side of the argument, Anthropix CEO Dario Amadei has been among the loudest industry voices calling for a slowdown. On his personal blog, he urged the industry to pace cutting-edge tools, more global coordination among democracies, and third-party safety evaluators.

9:53Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said he was quitting the industry over fears companies are racing towards systems they will not be able to control. Friday night at Colgate University, former President Barack Obama backed the slowdown crowd and endorsed more government oversight. quote,

10:42Football and the GOP Midterm Blitz. Republicans, scrambling for midterm momentum, are making a massive bet on football. They are pouring millions into ads during the country's biggest NFL and college games. The target is obvious. Mail voters are football's core audience. They were a critical part of President Trump's 2024 coalition. Trump won 55 % of the mail vote in 2024. His standing with men has slipped. A new Fox News poll puts his approval among them at 42%, down nine points from a year ago. Young men are the warning light. A spring Harvard youth poll found men ages 18 to 29 favored a Democratic congressional candidate by eight points after an even split between Trump and Harris in 2024.

11:36The GOP plan, use the money advantage and own the football airwaves. Last weekend, Republicans ran 5 ,546 TV spots during NFL and college games and the pre - and post-game shows where they advertised most heavily. Democrats ran 471, nearly 12 times as many according to ad tracking data obtained by Axios. The biggest splash was the Texas-Ohio state game, two states with competitive Senate races. The pro-GOP Senate leadership fund spent$2 million airing ads every quarter in front of 14 million viewers on ABC. National coverage meant viewers across the country saw Senate ads written for Texas or Ohio.

12:29Michigan is the clearest case. That Senate race could decide the chamber. SLF struck a deal with a vendor that manages sports programming in Michigan bars and put ads on more than 1 ,000 TVs at 150 bars across the state. Republicans launched that after Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed made critical remarks about football. Those remarks became the ads. A super PAC supporting Republican Mike Rogers premiered its latest attack on El-Sayed during Thursday night's Lions-Bills game and ran it again during Saturday's Michigan State-Notre Dame game on NBC. This is not only commercials.

13:13Turning Point USA, the group once led by Charlie Kirk, launched Grand American Tailgate, a get-out-the-vote tour of college campuses on football Saturdays. This weekend, it was in Oxford, Mississippi, ahead of Ole Miss LSU. Candidates are wrapping themselves in the sport. Minnesota Senate candidate Michelle Tafoya is spotlighting her career as an NFL sideline reporter. Arizona House candidate and former NFL kicker Jay Feely highlighted his football career at the GOP midterm convention. Rogers campaigned at last weekend's Michigan-Oklahoma game in Ann Arbor and gave an interview outside Michigan Stadium, the Big House, noting that his dad had been a high school coach.

14:01Democrats can lecture. Republicans are going where the men actually are. Saturday afternoons, Sunday ticket, Thursday night, and the bar TVs in Michigan. If the midterms hinge on getting that 2024 male coalition back in line, football is not a side bet. It is the field. That's your first look this Monday. Quick recap. Trump locks in permanent U.S. security control over Greenland with Denmark. No non-NATO bases, allied-only sensitive investment, access and overflight that survive independence, while Copenhagen and Nuke call it a win for Arctic security. He stands up an AI force on the Space Force model, rejects the slowdown and the Obama-Amadee panic, and keeps the race with China front and center.

14:52And Republicans carpet-bomb football with midterm ads, 12 to 1 over Democrats last weekend. because male voters are drifting and the GOP intends to meet them at the 50-yard line. We'll keep following all of it. I'm Dave AI. Thanks for starting your day with First Look. See you tomorrow.

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