Welcome to Meet the Press. Now, I'm Dave Gutierrez in Washington, where at this hour, former president Jimmy Carter's remains are on the way to the U.S. Capitol, where he will lie in state in the rotunda until his memorial service Thursday morning. We will bring you the arrival ceremony when it begins.
But first, we go to South Florida where President-elect Donald Trump held a wide-ranging news conference today full of grievances and false claims. Trump laid out agenda items for his first term, including an apparent push for a new era of American imperialism with a foreign policy that would seek to dramatically expand America's borders by economic or military force. Answering a question from my colleague Vaughn Hilliard, Trump said he's considering using the U.S.'s enormous economic leverage to take over Canada. Are you also considering military force to annex and acquire?
No, economic force, because Canada and the United States, that would really be something. You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like and it would also be much better for national security. Don't forget, we basically protect Canada. So why are we losing $200 billion a year and more to protect Canada?
And I said that to, as I called him, Governor Trudeau. I said, listen, what would happen if we didn't subsidize you, if we didn't, because we give them a lot of money. Why are we supporting a country $200 billion plus a year? Our military is at their disposal.
All of these other things. They should be a state. That's why I told Trudeau when he came down, I said, what would happen if we didn't do it? He said Canada would dissolve.
Canada is, of course, an ally and one of America's largest trading partners. And Trump has repeatedly mischaracterized the U.S. and Canada's trade relationship. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded on social media, quote, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States.
Separately, the president-elect would not rule out using military force to gain control of the Panama Canal and Greenland. Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion? No, I'm not going to commit to that. It might be that you'll have to do something.
Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. We need Greenland for national security purposes. I've been told that for a long time, long before I even ran. I mean, people have been talking about it for a long time.
You have approximately 45,000 people there. People really don't even know if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security. That's for the free world.
Now, we should note, Greenland was fully integrated into Denmark in 1953 under the Denmark Constitution. During today's press conference, the president-elect also accused President Biden of undercutting his incoming administration. He baselessly claimed a voter fraud in November's election, which he won. And he tried once again to rewrite history on the January 6th attack on the Capitol, downplaying the violence, falsely suggesting it was an inside job by the FBI and dangling potential pardons for rioters who violently attacked police.
Are you planning to pardon those who were charged with violent offenses? Well, we're looking at it and we have other people in there. And as you see, I guess 24 or 28 people came now from the FBI that came out very quietly. Nobody reported it, but they had people in some form related to the FBI.
They had four or five people that were strongly related to the FBI. We have to find out about that. We have to find out about Hezbollah. There was never charges of insurrection or anything like that.
But if there were, this would be the only insurrection in history where people went in as insurrectionists with not one gun. There wasn't one gun that they found. And why didn't they find the bomber, the pipe bomber? You know, they know who the pipe bomber is.
The FBI knows who it is. That's important to note. Weapons, including guns, were brought into the Capitol. There is no credible evidence the FBI was behind the attack.
And we don't know why Trump mentioned Hezbollah. There's no proof the FBI is aware of who placed pipe bombs outside the Capitol as well. And joining me now, NBC's Vaughn Hilliard, who was at that Trump press conference. And here on set with me, NBC's chief foreign affairs correspondent, Andrea Mitchell.
Thank you so much for joining us, Vaughn. I want to start with you. How seriously should we take this Trump expansion talk? Well, his son, Don Jr., was in Greenland today, not just by himself.
He was with one of Donald Trump's incoming deputy chiefs of staff who will be overseeing policy office. And so I think that it's important context when you're looking at Donald Trump. This has clearly been at the forefront of his mind when we're talking about Canada. It wasn't just one social media post about making it the 51st state.
And it's why I opened up my question to him today with the notation that under the assumption you are serious about acquiring and annexing Canada to which clearly based on the response he played, he is. But I think that, you know, outside of the military force and obviously the serious questions of what that would look like to overtake the Panama Canal in Greenland for Canada specifically, he was suggesting that the U.S. doesn't need any of its resources, despite Canada being one of our two largest trading partners and half of the imports that the U.S. brings in from Canada is oil and gas.
And so it is not quite clear in terms of detail or policy what that would look like if you were to try to cut off trading relations with Canada to essentially cripple its economy, enforce its hand to ultimately team up with the United States. I mean, it's so far down the line. I think it's objectively very difficult to talk about in great detail. And for Donald Trump's side of this, I try to follow up to the extent that he had have any policy that he put forward before Canadian officials.
And he did not provide any. And I want to ask Andrea Mitchell to react to this as well. Are we supposed to take this seriously? We're supposed to take it seriously because the president-elect said it and said it repeatedly.
But as Vaughn correctly points out, it is not U.S. policy. And while he will be the president and will change U.S. policy, it is not the policy of our allies.
Canada is a NATO ally. Their troops have fought side by side with American troops all over the world. And the fact that he's saying these things, I mean, he can withdraw from NATO, but that is less likely also. He said he won't.
It defies tradition. It defies treaties. The other thing is, as Vaughn correctly points out, and as you have pointed out, he is misstating key economic aspects of our trade policy. We have a trade deficit with Canada, with the EU, with China, our largest trading partners, trading blocks.
But that's because Americans want to buy their stuff. And we need many of their, you know, many of their products. Plus, cars are manufactured across the border. Parts go back and forth for a vehicle to be manufactured by American manufacturers.
It goes across to Canada or across to Mexico back and forth maybe 20 times. And Vaughn, I want to switch back to you on another topic. Because this was just such a wide-ranging news conference. We already played what some of President-elect Trump's said about the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
But what's his thinking, his latest thinking, on potential pardons for some of the rioters? Again, the president-elect has been very scant with the providing of details. For the better part of two years, he has promised to pardon January 6th defendants, which there are now more than 1,200 who have either been convicted or pled guilty to the charges for being a part of the mob that descended on January 6th. At one point in time, it sounded like he was looking at a blanket pardon of all of those individuals who were incarcerated or found guilty.
But he is today, he was asked specifically about whether he would pardon any individuals that assaulted or committed violence against police officers. He deviated from that and began talking about Ashley Babbitt, who was one of those pro-Trump individuals who was shot and killed by Secret Service when she attempted to enter the chamber that day. And I think that there's the second question that I was going to ask him was specifically also about seditious conspiracy, the 14 individuals who had been found guilty on those charges of violently attempting to stop the peaceful to stop the transfer of power because you're looking at the leaders of Proud Boys, of Oath Keepers, these major organizations which prosecutors were able to prove to juries that they had intended to stop the transfer of power and keep Donald Trump in office. He has not answered whether those individuals would get pardoned.
So I think that there's still a lot of outstanding questions as to the commitments he made on the campaign trail now just 13 days away from his inauguration. And there were a lot of grievances here from the president-elect, including laying into President Biden over what he says is underhanded behavior during the transition. What's that about? Right, I think that this is, I think for Donald Trump when he talks about Joe Biden making the transition difficult, obviously if you compare it to four years ago, there was not much eagerness on the part of the Trump administration to work in close conjunction with the Biden administration through that transition process.
But this go around, the president-elect is particularly pointing out the late efforts here by Joe Biden to block and end specific offshore drilling across a large part of waters