Trump Won't Visit Denmark If the Country Won't Sell Us Greenland
Plus: The recession that's not coming will be "moderate and short," Kamala Harris has seen a big poll drop since June, Facebook yanks "Women for Trump" ad, and more...
President Donald Trump doesn't seem to understand why Denmark won't just sell him Greenland. Come on, he even promised not to build a big, gold Trump Tower on some remote village shore there!
After making an initial offer on the Danish territory last week—one leaders in Denmark promptly rejected—Trump hasn't let go of his absolutely insane crusade to start buying up another country's land. "Strategically it's interesting and we'd be interested but we'll talk to them a little bit," the president told reporters Sunday.
On Monday, he tweeted this:
I promise not to do this to Greenland! pic.twitter.com/03DdyVU6HA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 20, 2019
Meanwhile, Eric Trump shared the same photo with quite a different sentiment:
Trump was supposed to visit Denmark in September, with other world leaders, but announced yesterday via Twitter that he was calling off the trip.
"Trump's announcement suggests that, despite his denials, the central purpose of his trip had been discussion of a U.S. purchase of the massive, glaciered island, which holds increasing value as melting sea ice opens new parts of the Arctic to shipping and resource extraction," states The Washington Post.
The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, has called Trump's offer "absurd" and said "I strongly hope that this is not meant seriously."
Greenland's Foreign Minister Ane Lone Bagger said "we are open for business, but we're not for sale."
On Tuesday night, Trump tweeted that because Frederiksen said "she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time."
I wonder if other national leaders will preemptively announce that none of their territory is for sale to ward off a possible Trump visit.
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) August 21, 2019
ELECTION 2020
Kamala Harris has seen a significant drop in polls recently. In the latest CNN poll of 2020 presidential candidates, Sen. Harris (D–Calif.) is down 12 percent since late June. This is the largest drop of any top candidate.
Joe Biden—already leading—was the only candidate to see a significant positive change, gaining 7 percentage points since CNN's late June polling. He's now at 29 percent, with nearest competitor Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) at 15 percent. (Read more about Sanders' new criminal just reform proposals here.)
Warren trailed right behind Sanders with 14 percent, followed by Buttigieg and Harris (both at 5 percent) and Beto O'Rourke (3 percent).
Booker, Castro, and Gabbard all polled at 2 percent.
FREE MINDS
Facebook yanks "Women for Trump" ad. The social media site said the ad—which featured a photo of women and the caption "The Women for Trump Coalition needs the support of strong women like you!"—was in violation of Facebook policy with regard to gender and advertising. More from The Hill:
Facebook's ad policy prohibits "content that asserts or implies personal attributes," including, among other things, "direct or indirect assertions or implications about a person's … gender identity."
Facebook reportedly pulled the ad following an inquiry from Popular Info.
"We've notified the campaign that the ads violate policy. They cannot continue to run unless fixed," a Facebook spokesperson told The Hill in a statement.
FREE MARKETS
Recession forecast not reassuring…The White House has gone from insisting the U.S. economy is not on the verge of a recession to saying that if we do have one, it will be "moderate and short."
A U.S. recession, if one were to hit, would be "moderate and short," acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told roughly 50 GOP donors at a closed-door luncheon this week https://t.co/E7XM0oy7sU via @nancook
— Sudeep Reddy (@Reddy) August 20, 2019
QUICK HITS
- Where have all the pirates gone?
- Markets in everything!
New from me: A Dutch furry redesigned a military vest that keeps you cool to work better with fursuits six years ago. Now soldiers, some of them furries themselves, are buying his product to use in combat training. Semper fur, baby. https://t.co/7Mnw55KgxU
— Blake Montgomery (@blakersdozen) August 20, 2019
- More bad signs about the war on Big Tech.
- Over at The Spectator, I sum up some of the worst anti-tech proposals floating around Washington.
- A new contender to this list: the anti-Section 230 proposal offered by Beto O'Rourke in the name of stopping "hate speech."
- The problem with "red flag" tools on social media.
- Jewish people show "great disloyalty" or "a total lack of knowledge" by voting Democrat, said Donald Trump.
Here is the president suggesting that Jews are disloyal if they don't vote Republican. The notion of provisional belonging--that Jews aren't really American or French or whatever if they don't do xx--is an idea with a hideous history. N.B. Some 75% of American Jews vote Democrat. https://t.co/fTHTtOSPhi
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) August 20, 2019
- Chelsea Manning wants your letters:
still getting all of your letters ✉️ someone wrote me one that said "i didn't know what to write, so I just drew you cats" with 3 pages of cats ???? and one dog ???????????? thank you all
— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) August 20, 2019
- The Justice Department and Food and Drug Administration are ramping up enforcement against unauthorized abortion pill sales.
- China is trying to stop online gambling in the Philippines and elsewhere. "China is mounting pressure on Southeast Asian nations in its effort to stamp out online gambling which it says causes hundreds of millions of yuan to illegally flow out of its economy," reports the Bangkok Post.
- Reason's Peter Suderman analyzes Kamala Harris on health care:
Harris doesn't really care about health policy as policy; instead she appears to view the issue through an exclusively political lens, wanting to be seen as a supporter of Medicare for All and its most popular promises without reckoning with the trade-offs that a real single-payer health care system of the sort proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). Sanders may be in it for the revolution, but Harris is in it for the optics.
- J.D. Tuccille offers fashion tips.
