Trump raises the issue of using military or economic force to control Greenland and the Panama Canal

President-elect Donald J. Trump said Tuesday that he does not rule out using military or economic coercion to force Panama to give up control of the canal that America built more than a century ago and to force Denmark to sell Greenland to the United States.

In a choppy, hour-long news conference, Mr. Trump also repeated his threat that “all hell will break loose in the Middle East” if hostages held by Hamas were not released by Inauguration Day, repeating the threat four times.

“If they don’t come back by the time I take office, all hell will break loose in the Middle East,” he told reporters. “This will not be in the interest of Hamas, and it will not be in the interest of anyone, frankly.” All hell will break loose. “I don’t have to say more, but that’s the thing.”

Mr. Trump did not elaborate during the press conference, offering a patchwork of grievances, complaints and false claims, ranging from the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan to offshore drilling to the criminal cases against him and the size of his electoral victory.

He refused to rule out using military force to restore the Panama Canal, which was returned to Panama under a treaty in the late 1990s, and Greenland, which Trump has said is essential to US national security.

“Maybe you should do something,” he said.

Trump’s desire to expand his presence in the United States is entirely consistent with his mentality of making everything he controls as big as possible, going back to his string of takeovers in the late 1980s. In recent days, Mr. Trump has repeatedly talked about buying Greenland and seizing the Panama Canal.

It was not clear how serious the president-elect was in some of his statements during the press conference. At one point, he suggested that his administration rename the Gulf of Mexico as America’s Gulf.

The news conference was a back-to-the-future moment for Mr. Trump, who has often used similar appearances as president to control the public narrative through attacks on his opponents and embellished and often false assertions about his accomplishments.

In an appearance before reporters described as an announcement of economic development, Trump criticized President Biden for banning oil drilling in some waters, said the special counsel who investigated him was “unhinged” and attacked a New York judge. Supervising a criminal case against him.

“This is a sick group of people, and it was all to influence the election,” Mr. Trump said. It was all a battle against their political opponent. We’ve never had that in this country. We’ve got that in some countries. “We get that in third-tier countries.”

Before taking questions, Mr. Trump spoke for more than half an hour without focusing on any single topic. He spoke loudly about Mr. Biden’s focus on electric cars, saying: “I don’t know what it is with electric cars. This guy loves electrics.” He complained about shower heads with limited water flow.

“It is called rain, it comes down from the sky. “They want to do it, and the water doesn’t come out of the bathroom,” he said. “It’s dripping, dripping, dripping. What happens when you’re in the bathroom 10 times longer, you know. And there’s no water coming out of the tap.”

He also returned to one of his favorite targets: his hatred of windmills.

“Windmills drive whales crazy,” he added.

The president-elect spoke at length about foreign policy, criticizing Biden’s handling of the war in Ukraine, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the conflict in Israel. He also repeated his threat not to protect NATO allies, a key part of the treaty, if they do not increase the amount of money they spend on defending their countries.

At one point, he appeared to confirm a recent Financial Times story suggesting he wanted NATO countries to commit to spending up to 5% of their economic output on defence, a significant increase.

He also criticized Canada, saying that the country should be a state of the United States because of the economic support the United States provides to the country. He said that he would not use military force to achieve this, but he said that he would use economic force to put pressure on the American neighbor.

“Why do we support a country with over 200 million a year?” He told reporters. “Our military has all these other things at their disposal. They must be a state. “That’s what I told Trudeau when he came down.”

Trump threatened to use “economic power” to bring Canada and the United States together, implying that the United States would reduce its purchases of Canadian products.

He also said he would “impose a tariff on Denmark at a very high level” if it did not give Greenland to the United States.

During the press conference, Trump was told that a federal judge had blocked Jack Smith, the special counsel who was investigating his actions on January 6 and his handling of classified documents, from releasing a report on the investigations.

“So if they are not allowed to release the report, this is the way things should be,” he added. Why is he allowed to write a fake report? It will just be a fake report. “This is great news.”