Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
Happy Friday — and for those of you in the path of a winter storm this weekend, good luck.
Today’s edition includes a report from our White House team on how Trump’s words and choices in Davos might permanently shape American alliances, as well as a profile of Vivek Ramaswamy — but a very different Vivek Ramaswamy from the one you might remember from the 2024 presidential race. Plus, Kristen Welker previews her conversation with historian and filmmaker Ken Burns on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.”
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— Scott Bland
‘The damage has been done’: As Trump claims victory on Greenland, Europe loses trust
By Peter Nicholas and Peter Alexander
DAVOS, Switzerland — President Donald Trump flew home from an international conference here Thursday with a parting message: “It was an incredible time in Davos.”
For him, perhaps. For many of the United States’ European allies, it was a sign of global “rupture” that could reverberate for years.
Trump has appeared to back off his maximalist demand that the U.S. take ownership of Greenland, moving instead toward a deal that would allow the U.S. to place more troops, bases and military hardware on the island, a territory of Denmark.
In an interview with Fox Business, he said, “We’re getting everything we wanted — total security, total access to everything.”
Yet all of that was available to Trump from the start, without the drama that sent the NATO alliance barreling toward an internal crisis, a Danish official told NBC News on Thursday.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, told NBC News, “As an American, as an Alaskan, I was concerned that in this global forum, the relationships that have been built up with so many, perhaps, were fractured.”
Before Trump touched down in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned in a speech that geopolitical relations are undergoing a “rupture.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz echoed Carney’s point in his own speech in Davos on Thursday. He warned that the “international order of the past three decades — anchored in international law — has always been imperfect. Today, its very foundations have been shaken.”
How Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor returned him to the ‘real world’
By Henry J. Gomez
INDEPENDENCE, Ohio — The Vivek Ramaswamy running for governor of Ohio in 2026 is different from the one you might remember running for president in 2024.
Back then, Ramaswamy positioned himself at the far-right flank of a Republican Party that was about to once again nominate Donald Trump. The son of legal immigrants, he proposed ending birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants and condemned “woke” culture. He invoked the “great replacement theory” — the idea that white people are being marginalized by migrants and people of color. He was very online.
This time, Ramaswamy has Trump’s endorsement for a job that a Democrat hasn’t won in 20 years. He is also calling out bigotry and racism, while adopting a congenial tone more reminiscent of the Republican he hopes to succeed, term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine. Once a brash showman, Ramaswamy now presents himself to Ohioans as an open-minded statesman.
Most strikingly, Ramaswamy, known for his provocative tweets, recently swore off social media. He is attempting to reorient his political identity in “the real world” — a phrase he used no fewer than seven times in an interview with NBC News this month. He acknowledges, in a roundabout way, that he has changed.
