With all the noise surrounding Donald Trump’s alleged request to purchase Greenland, you’d be right to think that this tale was another political manoeuvre from Trump’s enemies to discredit his Presidency and/or sanity.
Confirmation this weekend that the Trump administration had explored the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark, set social media and the M.S.M ablaze.
Time, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, CNN and The Guardian, all jumped on the reaction from Denmark’s Prime Minister, parading the word “absurd” around as though Trump’s idea was his own.
Even Sky News got in on the action, headlining a piece with the word ‘push’ to describe the Trump administration’s enquiry.
Weaving its own malicious tale of Trump’s “madness”, Vice trumped them all by highlighting remarks from Soren Espersen, foreign affairs spokesman for the populist Danish People’s Party, who said, “If he [Trump] is truly contemplating this, then this is final proof that he has gone mad…”[i]
Twitter users were also indicative of the widespread ignorance of history:
Dear Greenland,
We’re sorry the current President of the United States is an idiot and offered to buy your country. We’re embarrassed and apologize. Sorry again. Thank you.
America
— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) August 20, 2019
#Trump #Greenland Seriously? He Thought He Could Buy It?
pic.twitter.com/jsCIEjGrKS
— Mike Allen Cartoons (@MikeAll30808974) August 19, 2019
To their credit CNN and The Guardian came out as the most balanced. Paul LeBlanc of CNN and Martin Pengelly of The Guardian were the only journalists careful enough to take to time to acknowledge the fact that the idea of buying Greenland, was first posited by Democrat President, Harry S. Truman in 1946, who offered to pay Denmark $100 million (in gold) in exchange for Greenland because of its strategic value. Truman ended up securing a military base, nothing more. [ii]
Truman, not Trump was the first to come up with the idea. Trump may not be letting go of Truman’s proposal to buy Greenland because of its strategic value to the United States, but any suggestion that this new proposal from an American administration, is an unveiling of Trump as a colonial imperialist, fascist, is, in the light of the fact that the idea originated with Truman, off-the-wall crazy.
In order to justify such accusations, accusers would have to link Trump to Truman, and build a narrative of conspiracy only believed by the gullible.
As equally “batty”, any suggestion that buying Greenland is yet more “evidence” of the alleged imbalance in Trump’s psychological disposition is pure fiction.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that Trump being starry-eyed by the prospect of buying Greenland, is the real estate professional in him, not some latent Hitlerian tendencies, as is alleged by every anti-Trump personality looking to justify their proton-pseudos complex.
References:
[i] Marcin, T. 2019. Denmark to Trump: Seriously, Greenland Isn’t for Sale, Vice News
[ii] Koning Beals, R. 2019. It’s not the first time U.S. has tried to buy Greenland MarketWatch
©Rod Lampard, 2019
Rod Lampard 
As global warming continues and more and more land becomes accessible the natural resource wealth in northern Russia, Canada AND Greenland will be enormous. If the experts don’t think the super powers will fight to exploit Greenland’s wealth they are quite naive. I can’t imagine it not being “annexed” by one of the super powers or perhaps split like Poland was pre WW II. One example in Russia is that as the permafrost and tundra warms up it is become a dream world for paleontologists with digging up Ice Age humans and mammals. Gotta be dinosaurs too but the economic impact and wealth is unimaginable.
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Fair point.
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