These signs show Trump's maddest threat yet might be blocked … amid the blizzard of crazy
Seizing Greenland? Seriously? This is where we’re at? It seemed like some bizarro Dr. Strangelove fantasy. And yet what was once dismissed as preposterous has exploded into a genuine diplomatic emergency.
It was the capper to another surreal week in Trump’s America, one that would have left George Orwell muttering, “Told ya.”
There is no sane reason for Trump to want to “own” Greenland, but plenty of insane ones. When asked why acquiring it by force was important to him, his response to the New York Times was, “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success.” As if that answer made even the thinnest shred of sense.
For our president, a glacier-strewn Arctic island is simply a plaything to possess, even if it would result in blowing up our NATO alliance and releasing utter turmoil throughout Europe.
We’ve all long known that wherever Trump goes, chaos follows. It’s his brand. Everything he touches, dies. That didn’t matter so much when he was just another pathetic rich old man screaming into the ether from his Mar-a-Lago balcony. But since he assumed the presidency a second time, every move he makes has great national and international bearing. This is highly unfortunate.
Just think about all of the turmoil and madness that was being juggled over the past week alone:
- That wild Greenland fantasy. Who cares if it would perhaps irreparably disrupt the world order? Little Donnie wants it, even as his sycophantic aides try to dissuade him. Their boss is drunk on the power of being the self-proclaimed “hunter and not the hunted,” permitting him whatever he wants — consequences be damned.
- Having kidnapped the Venezuelan president and declared himself “acting president,” Trump vowed to steal the nation’s oil while installing a puppet proxy. No one evidently bothered to tell him that refining the oil was more expensive than it was worth. But oh well.
- Threatening to attack Iran for attacking its own protesting citizens while at the same time attacking U.S. citizens for … protesting. “Only we can do that to our people!” Trump might as well have declared. The hypocrisy is stunning.
- Deciding the best strategy for tamping down anger was to restrict any “investigation” into Jonathan Ross’s murder of Renee Nicole Good to a federal cover-up, excluding city officials while opting to probe the dead woman’s motives.
- While pictures of citizens in Minneapolis being pulled out of their houses and cars and otherwise assaulted and terrorized played all over the media, Trump doubled down, insisting lack of respect for law enforcement was the real problem.
- Classy as ever, the president flipped off and mouthed “F--- you!” twice to an auto worker at a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, after the worker yelled, “Pedophile protector!” as Trump walked through. The White House defended the president’s response as “appropriate and unambiguous” … while complaining about Minneapolis protesters “putting their middle finger, proudly so, at the camera.” Seriously.
- On Thursday, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to restore order in Minnesota — seemingly a precursor to cancelling November’s midterms.
- Trump told Reuters there was no need for the midterms. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted he was joking. If so, this was about as amusing as an oncologist telling a patient, “You have cancer. Just kidding!”
Meanwhile, there is the looming catastrophe of doubled or tripled healthcare premiums for millions of Americans, while others on Medicaid are booted off coverage entirely.
Oh yeah, and there’s also a little thing called the Epstein files. As of the middle of January, less than 1 percent of the Epstein files mandated for release by Dec. 19 via an act of Congress have seen the light of day — less than 13,000 of an estimated document total exceeding two million.
Here’s the thing: Trump and his minions love to pile on the pandemonium. It’s not a side effect of his authoritarian rule, but the point. It isn’t just about keeping the water perpetually on boil, to hold the Epstein files forever on the backburner. It’s also about keeping the opposition off-balance.
We can never zero in on a single issue with Trump, because bedlam predominates. No one thing can be successfully addressed because the target itself is both always moving and always enmeshed in a blizzard of targets. Trump counts on everyone being shellshocked — continuously bewildered.
But something else has also been at play since Trump took office a year ago Tuesday. Since there are no effective checks on his power, given the Supreme Court’s acquiescence to his administration’s every whim, he can do whatever he wants – and has.
Cabinet members are similarly powerful and brazen. They always seem shocked by pushback, reacting with rage and astonishment. We’re seeing this in Minneapolis. People including the president and vice president declare that up is down, black is white, and cold is hot, and no one can effectively challenge them.
Equally frightening, the masked ICE monsters breaking laws and smashing heads have been imbued with something resembling complete immunity.
The only thing giving me hope is that Republicans in the Senate are, as of late this week, vowing to stop Trump from seizing Greenland — a sovereign territory part of a sovereign nation, Denmark — by force. That any Republican would oppose their king on any issue for any reason strikes me as a minor miracle. Until they cave, that is.
It would certainly help matters to take at least one Trump-created crisis off the table, leaving us with only a dozen or so others. Though I also fear that if he backs off Greenland, part of the deal might be changing its name to Trumpland.
I’m not kidding.
- Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
