Reason Roundup

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...

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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:

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."


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."


QUICK HITS

  • Chelsea Manning wants your letters:

  • 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.