Donald Trump has apparently mistaken a defense agreement for a receipt, and someone needs to check his pockets before he leaves the next NATO meeting.
Early Wednesday, he announced that massive oil, gas, and mineral exploration was about to begin in “our new and beautiful Greenland,” which is an interesting way to describe a place that continues to belong to someone else. Most people return from a diplomatic meeting with a commemorative pen. Donald apparently believes he got an island. I’m imagining Denmark reviewing the paperwork while he stands beside the departure gate insisting they wrap it.
The September agreement expanded American military access to Greenland. It did not transfer sovereignty, and it did not grant the United States special exploration rights. Greenland remains a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. He has permission to do certain things there and has decided this means the whole place is his, like a man renting a cabin for the weekend and arriving Monday morning to evict the owner.
I suppose we should be grateful he hasn’t left a review yet. Beautiful property. Very large. Some difficulty with the previous occupants, who continue to insist they are the current occupants. Three stars because the oil wasn’t ready.
The phrase “our new and beautiful Greenland” has the unmistakable energy of a man unveiling a refrigerator he bought without consulting his wife. Except the refrigerator is inhabited, Denmark has questions, and he keeps telling everyone it came with unlimited gasoline.
There is something magnificent about watching him announce a territorial acquisition through the same app where he complains about television. Generations of diplomats have labored over borders, treaties, sovereignty, and the rights of populations. Donald has discovered a much faster process: select a noun, put “our” in front of it, and wait for the applause. I have children. We are familiar with this system of property law. Usually, though, the dispute concerns a purple cup, and I can resolve it without calling Copenhagen.
Then there’s the oil, which he described as “easily available.” Easily available is a remarkable assessment of a place where Arctic conditions, infrastructure shortages, and difficult geology have frustrated extraction efforts for decades. Greenland also stopped issuing new oil and gas exploration permits in 2021. Apparently the oil is only waiting for someone sufficiently confident to arrive and tell the ice to move.
This is a man who would stand over a frozen driveway and announce that the pavement was immediately accessible, then accuse the shovel of being a Democrat. I’m picturing the first project meeting. The engineers bring maps, equipment estimates, permitting requirements, and an explanation of why this will take years. Donald brings a Sharpie and circles Wednesday.
He seems to believe natural resources become commercially viable when he compliments them. Beautiful oil. Tremendous oil. Oil that came up to him with tears in its eyes and said it had never been extracted properly before. The ice, meanwhile, has declined to comment. Very rude. Probably European.
But the announcement improved considerably when he moved into national defense. According to Trump, any future attack on the United States will have to pass across Greenland. I hadn’t realized we could require an enemy to use a designated entrance. This simplifies military planning enormously. Someone should tell the Navy it can relax. Donald has put a little sign on the planet. Please approach from Greenland. All other approaches closed for presidential convenience.
Imagine being an enemy commander and discovering that your attack has been rejected because you used the wrong direction. You’ve spent years developing the technology, trained the personnel, and prepared the operation, but the American president says you have to go around. There’s a cone in a custom orange made to match his skin tone.
A missile approaching from the Pacific would presumably receive a courteous notification explaining that it had missed its connection. Please proceed to Greenland, where a representative will be available to destroy you in the order you arrived.
We should install one of those take-a-number dispensers. The drones can sit quietly beneath a portrait of Donald while a clerk calls out, “Now obliterating thirty-seven.”
And this defense system, he assured us, will defeat “any other form of weapon not yet even conceived.” How reassuring. The engineers haven’t finished imagining the threat, but he’s already beaten it. Somewhere, a scientist is sketching a theoretical weapon on a napkin, and Donald has declared victory over the napkin. I would love to know how that procurement meeting works. What are we defending against? We don’t know. What does it do? Nobody has thought of it. Have we stopped it? Absolutely. The president was very clear.
There are real people living in Greenland, and their home deserves more consideration than an announcement from a man who treats the world as an estate sale where nobody has put the stickers on yet. There are also Americans worried about their bills who deserve energy policy more substantial than him pointing toward the Arctic and announcing that the gas is over there.
Felonious beast!!! YES!👏🏼
Excellent satire here. But dang it, you’re right. This is how utterly ludicrous this felonious beast is.