Transcript - America This Week, Jan 23, 2026: "Why Davos Sucks."
Donald Trump gets panned, Howard Lutnick inspires outrage, and Matt and Walter debate civil liberties in Minnesota.
Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America this week. I’m Matt Taibbi.
Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.
Matt Taibbi: Walter, how’s it going? You’re still in a disaster zone, right?
Walter Kirn: Yeah, I’ve been up all night moving my wife’s office into another room because we had a big flood right before Christmas. It destroyed most of the building I live in, and that’s why I’ve been kind of cryptic about something difficult in my life. The people who come to restore the building come this morning, so I had to stay up last night clearing certain rooms, and I had great insight into my wife’s life and psyche that I might never have had because she has kept every unused cash register coupon, not just regular coupons, but the ones that come out of the cash register that are actually the receipt.
And she has kept every power bill, every receipt, everything that can be construed as a receipt, as proof of your innocence should somebody challenge you. Wow. She has kept, I saw all of them. I wondered at the end where all the stuff was, we had all the receipts, but where was the stuff? I mean, we should have been buried under things, but that kind of revisiting of your life in an unhealthy way is what happens late at night when you’re cleaning up from floods. So, I’ll be sure to bring a strange perspective to today’s show. I promise
Matt Taibbi: You definitely find a very positive spin to put on it when you talk to her about it. That’s the main lesson that you want to take away. Are you a receipt keeper, Matt? I am not. I am not. So, I went to obviously spend some time in St. Petersburg, the former linen grad, which was once the site of the famous blockade. So, the city was, for a long time, completely cut off to the outside world, and there were tons of disasters inside, and there are people who survived that period who are revered. They’re allowed to go to the front of the line. They’re called blockade, Nikki, but they will not throw anything away. If you go in the home of a person from the blockade, you’ll see that they’ve collected like napkin ends, bits of straw, stuff like that. And they’ll say to themselves, the line is always, well, that can still come in handy. And so, I’m the opposite of that. I’m not a saver. I’ve never been through
Walter Kirn: Thing those people. Just to pause a second, those people have what they feel is a rational response to having lost everything, which is to after that keep everything right.
Matt Taibbi: Yep. Yeah, exactly.
Walter Kirn: But do they not have some wisdom in that? There are periodic depressions, famines, especially in that part of the World Wars times when things get really tough and you need a napkin, right?
Matt Taibbi: Absolutely, yes. They’re never without, and no, I mean, there was one person who was a friend’s grandmother who went through that, who was a font of wisdom about all sorts of things, and went through horrors. You can’t even imagine.
Walter Kirn: Well, things are getting so weird, Matt, just to bring it back that I’m becoming that way
Matt Taibbi: Really.
Walter Kirn: Receipts could be toilet paper receipts could be made into fishing lures or something.
Matt Taibbi: Bullets.
Walter Kirn: Yeah, bullets. We might have to decorate our Christmas trees with just crumpled paper because I’m looking forward with about a 5% possibility to a Hobbesian universe in which neighbors organize, go out in one car and come back with various things from the woods.
Matt Taibbi: You know what? We’re going to be reading a brave New World, but maybe we should read the jungle at some point soon, the Hobbes one. But you’re absolutely right. Yeah, no, I have the same premonition about all against all imminent future, and I’m worried about it and would love to have a second home in Palau or someplace like that, where
Walter Kirn: The problem is getting to the second home. You have to have a warning that shit’s going to fall apart. And even the Illuminati, I don’t think get that much warning. So, you need find a pilot fuel up, file a flight plan, and hope you get out before whatever the disaster is.
Matt Taibbi: Yeah. There are some friends of mine who have pilot’s licenses, and I’m beginning to become envious of them. Well, part of that is because of what we witnessed this week, and we’re going to talk in an interesting way about the developments of this week, which was yet another showdown between Donald Trump and Europe, partly over Greenland, partly over some other things. But let’s just roll the tape that everybody is wigging out about. We’ll start with that briefly before we veer into the stuff that we think is really important. So, let’s go look at, SOT one:
President Donald Trump: We never asked for anything and we never got anything. We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be frankly unstoppable. But I won’t do that. Okay, now everyone’s saying, oh, good. That’s probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don’t have to use force, I don’t want to use force, I won’t use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland, where we already had it as a trustee, but respectfully returned it back to Denmark. Not long ago after we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians, and others in World War ii, we gave it back to them.
Walter Kirn: Trump has invented a whole new way of giving a political speech.
Matt Taibbi: What’s that?
Walter Kirn: Well, I mean, if you heard that speech that plainly put that in the language and the logic of the streets, if you heard the kind of pettiness, you rewarded us by winning World War II by taking green back, except we gave it to you out of the goodness of our heart,
Matt Taibbi: Which the New York Times fact checked to the nth degree.
Walter Kirn: Well, yeah. I’m not talking about the truth level of the Trump’s speech. I’m talking about the rhetorical level. This is a way that politicians didn’t use to talk. I mean, you maybe heard it at the club or in a warehouse with people negotiating for goods that have just come in or in some mercantile or commercial fashion. If you don’t sell me your company, something bad is going to happen. Jim, and I’m not saying you have to do it, but this is how he’s talking now. It’s straight deal making with the world, and it sounds a little goofy, but one of the reasons it sounds goofy is he’s the only one who speaks this language. The rest of them still talk about morals and norms and this and that and try to frame everything and seed it in bigger ideals. And Trump is like, you’re going to give me that because you owe me that, and then I’ll owe you this, and then will you square? Okay. And the rest of them are in some Hegelian progressive dream where the world is moving toward justice. In fact, the world has moved toward naked deal making, which it already probably was supported by, but has now come front and …
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