Uninvited guests

Tweet

 

Relative to the size of its population, Greenland must surely be about to become the most-visited country by US dignitaries in the period since Trump was elected for the second time. His son, Donald Junior, undertook an entirely ‘private’ visit before his father was even installed in the White House, turning up in a discreet fashion giant Trump-branded jet and spending the day there, during which homeless people were invited in off the street to enjoy a free lunch wearing MAGA hats (which the ‘tourists’ had coincidentally brought with them) for the benefit of the photographers (who had also conveniently tagged along for this ‘private’ visit).

Next up, originally scheduled for Thursday to Saturday, was another ‘private’ visit by the Vice President’s wife to ‘watch a dog-sled competition’, which the VP himself rather impulsively decided to join. After all, what sort of VP is so busy that he can’t suddenly drop his semi-public planning of bombing raids to take a three-day trip to the Arctic to watch a few dog sleds racing? Coincidentally, the National Security Advisor (assuming he’s still in post tomorrow) and the Energy Secretary are also joining the group in order to visit the US base on the island before they were planning for themselves to become part of the assembled audience for the dog sledding. Until, that is, there was some pushback, as a result of which the dog watching has been cancelled, and the group will confine themselves to a one-day visit to the US base, whilst the armoured cars which had already been delivered to transport them around the island were sent back to the US. Pity that – it rather spoiled the punch line about half the US government literally going to the dogs.

According to Trump (a form of words which is enough in itself to tells us that whatever follows will be a lie), the delegation on this ‘private’ visit had been ‘invited’ by unnamed Greenlandic officials, although no-one in the Greenlandic government seems to know anything about any invitation. It was probably issued by the new officials whose appointment to run the island Trump has not yet announced. It’s certainly in line with Trump’s equally specious claim that Greenlanders ‘want’ to become part of the USA despite (presumably ‘fake’) opinion poll findings to the contrary. It’s not a Trump original playbook, of course: Putin also ‘knew’ that Crimeans were aching to become part of Russia before he seized the territory in 2014. Even longer ago, a certain European dictator ‘knew’ that Austrians wanted to be German deep down, even if they didn’t know it themselves. As both that dictator and Putin knew, it’s far better to hold a referendum on the issue after taking control, when the voting and the counting of the votes can be ‘properly supervised’ than to accept the verdict of polls taken in advance.

But, to continue the parallel with Crimea, how long will it be before the US equivalent of ‘little green men’ start mysteriously appearing on the streets of Nuuk?