Joke, No Joke

This was a joke- a bad one, not at all funny, but a joke, nevertheless. On January 11

The commander-in-chief, 79, took questions from reporters but had to briefly pause the gaggle as he struggled to stand on his return from Mar-a-Lago to Washington DC.

The president then turned to his loyal press secretary Leavitt and blurted out that he needed to stop himself from falling down.

She looked around the flight cabin for something to prop the boss up.

'I'm looking for something to grab here. Because it's going to get rough. I think you did this to me, you put me in a position where there's absolutely nothing to grab,' Trump said, blaming reporters.

'So I'm looking for something to grab. And it's not going to be Karoline!'

Leavitt appeared to briefly pull back from Trump but smiled as she moved his hand toward a nearby curtain.

It was a very weak joke, followed by the press secretary giving Donald a little approbration as he'd demand. Leavitt then retreated slightly, appropriately.

Though not humorous, the remark was light-hearted and if Trump ever grabs Leavitt, it won't be in public, anyway, because he's too young for her.  It was not a matter of public interest, so the media ignored it and moved on to significant topics.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt snapped Thursday at a reporter who didn’t buy her attempt to dismiss President Donald Trump’s repeated mentions of canceling elections.

 

Four days later, this was no joke.

During a White House press briefing, a reporter asked Leavitt why the president kept mentioning canceling elections. Trump had pointed out while speaking to Reuters that presidents never do well in the midterm elections, and bragged that because his administration has already accomplished so much, maybe the democratic process wasn’t necessary at all.

“When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election,” Trump said. The president had made a similar remark while speaking to Republicans at the Kennedy Center last week.

“The president was simply joking,” Leavitt said. “He was saying, ‘We’re doing such a great job, we’re doing everything American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling.’ But he was speaking facetiously.”

The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg posed a follow-up. “Are you saying the president finds the idea of cancelling elections funny?”

“Andrew, were you in the room? No you weren’t. I was in the room, I heard the conversation. And only someone like you would take that so seriously, and pose that in a question in that way,” Leavitt replied.

 

 In June, 2020 a reporter for the American Journal noted eleven (11) times when Trump, according to a member of his team or himself, was joking, being sarcastic, or "needling." In the latter case, Marco Rubio was characterizing Donald's remark "China should start an investigation into the Bidens."

That was 5-8  years before ABC News recently listed the nine political opponents, past and present, of Donald Trump whom the President's Justice Department is investigating. (There also are three- James Comey, Letitia James, and John Bolton- who have been indicted, the first two at least because they resemble a ham sandwich.) They are Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve chairperson; Lisa Cook, Federal Reserve governor; Mark Kelly, US senator; Adam Schiff, US senator; Eric Swallwell, US representative; Chris Christie, former NJ governor; Jack Smith, former special counsel; Miles Taylor, former chief of staff to the Department of Homeland Security; Christopher Kres, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Donald is not joking, being facetious, or even (primarily) trolling when he muse about cancelling elections. Oh, he enjoys getting a response from his enemies, But that's not his purpose.

Trump wants to see the reaction when he throws something against the wall, to see if it sticks. He is floating an idea, testing the waters. If no one notices or if there is little discernible revulsion, he is confident that he can put something into effect at the right (for him) time.

And if the reaction is antagonistic and the response contentious, he or a spokesperson can claim the President was only joking or being facetious. Yet, at the same time, Donald has moved the goal posts and softened the public up for when he's more inclined to make a move.

Reporters need to know how to counter this strategy. Feinberg was ready when he shot back at Leavitt "are you saying the President finds the idea of cancelling elections funny?"  A reasonably effective variation might be "how is that joke (or facetiousness) funny (or amusing)?" It's tough to come up with something on the fly but the correspondents no longer have any excuse. They know if they ask a substantive question that the press secretary probably will say something nasty or reprehensible. 

Allowing DonaldTrump's mouthpiece freely and without dissent to mimic the President she so slavishly serves is no way to run a free press.

Share |

Release the Records

He has me confused. Is Eric Erickson stupid, naive, or dishonest?  Erickson says

The New York Times pushed out a story just the other day after Renee Good got killed by the ICE agent, a multi-angled camera view to insist it did not look like the ICE agent got hit.... CNN echoed The New York Times, claiming that it did not appear that he got hit.

We now have the medical records of the ICE agent. I believe his name is Jonathan Ross- internal bleeding in his hip area from the impact of the 3,000+ pound car hitting him. He was hit by Renee Good.

 

The New York Times pushed out a multi-angle camera view claiming Renee Good did not hit the ICE agent. But now we have the agent’s medical records.

She did hit him. Where is the apology? pic.twitter.com/x1nnN6pGB7

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) January 14, 2026

CBS Newson on Wednesday reported 

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot Renee Good last week in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident, according to two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition.

It was unclear how extensive the bleeding was. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Ross' injury, but has not yet responded to CBS News' requests for more information. This story will be updated as we learn more.

Videos from the scene showed Ross walking away after the incident.

Ross has not returned to work, one source said, but did not say why.

Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, previously acknowledged that Ross was taken to the hospital after the shooting and was released the same day. She said he was recovering from his injuries, describing him as an experienced law enforcement officer who believed he was defending himself and fellow agents.

Not only is it unclear how extensive the bleeding was, it is unclear whether the injury was more extensive than a common, everyday household injury. As described by the Cleveland Clinic, this sounds a lot like internal bleeding:

“Ecchymosis” (pronounced “eh-chuh-mow-sis”) is the medical term for a bruise. A bruise, or contusion, is skin discoloration from damaged, leaking blood vessels underneath your skin. Even though there’s blood pooling underneath your skin, you won’t have any external bleeding unless your skin breaks open.

We don't know whether Ross was severely injured. However, we do know that "internal bleeding" can be no more serious than a bruise and that we cannot take remarks by anyone in this Administration about this incident as the gospel truth.

Soon after the shooting, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem called Renee Good a"domestic terrorist."  She was not. 

Vice President J.D. Vance called the victim a "deranged leftist." There is no evidence that she was deranged or in any way mentally or psychologically deficient. 

President Trump almost instantly after the killing remarked that "the woman" was "very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer. She did not. (Good was leaving the scene when she eviently was shot three times and clearly did not "willfully and viciously" run anyone over.)

This Administration's record on the killing of Renee Good alread has been one of division and deceit, lying profusely to justify its inhumane and destructive policy toward both immigration and protestors. Nonetheless, we'll be able to determine definitively, hopefully, the extent  of Agent Jonathan Ross' injury once his medical report is released. That may be released simultaneously with the release of the alleged shooting of presidential candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in July, 2024 or release of the full Epstein files. When pigs fly.

Share |

Contemplating His Options

This is a terribly dishonest piece but one which should bring to mind an important point.

Joy Behar says that ICE deporting illegals is strategy for Trump to win the next election...

Good to know Democrats are admitting that illegals voting were part of their scheme to steal an election...pic.twitter.com/Yz57uFQrHO

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) January 13, 2026

Obviously, The View's Joy Behar is not saying anything about illegal immigrants voting in "the next election" or any election. Ironically, she is talking about, well, non-election.  She states "I worry about that Trump is looking for this kind of pandemonium to go on like you just described so that he can declare martial law and also cancel the midterms."

He is, and he probably could. However, there is something else Donald could do, and he already has hinted at it.  In a recent interview with The New York Times, President Trump said

that he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his loss in the 2020 election, even though he doubted whether the Guard was “sophisticated enough” to carry out the order effectively.

The remarks by Mr. Trump in the interview last week harked back to one of the most perilous moments from his first term in office, when he was urged by some advisers to order his national security agencies to take control of machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems in an effort to find evidence that they had been hacked to rig the election against him.

The statement also came as he has continued his attacks on digital voting machines, saying that he wants to “lead a movement” to get rid of them altogether in advance of this year’s midterm elections.

This was not a spur-of-the-moment thought. Rather

Mr. Trump has long been obsessed with voting machines, particularly those built by Dominion, a company that has figured prominently in conspiracy theories that technology was used to rob him of victory in his race against Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Allegations that Dominion machines were hacked in a plot to flip votes away from Mr. Trump swirled constantly in the chaotic period after the 2020 election and sat at the heart of several lawsuits filed by the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell that sought to overturn the results of the vote in four key swing states.

The accusations about Dominion came to a head during a pitched Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18, 2020, when a team of outside advisers, including Ms. Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, pitched Mr. Trump on a brazen plan: They wanted the president to use the military or federal law enforcement officers to seize Dominion machines in several states where he believed there had been fraud in order to conduct a recount of the vote.

The advisers went so far as to present Mr. Trump with draft executive orders that they claimed would grant him the authority to follow through on the outrageous plan.

Cooler, perhaps more democratic, heads prevailed as

Even proposing the idea of inserting armed federal forces into the administration of a presidential race shattered the most basic norms of American democracy. And it was vigorously opposed at the meeting by several of Mr. Trump’s top aides, including Pat A. Cipollone, his White House counsel at the time. The aides argued that Mr. Trump had no legal basis to seize the machines and they quickly called other top officials in an effort to persuade the president that there was no evidence that Dominion systems had been interfered with.

Still, Mr. Trump explored the possibility of seizing the machines. He raised the question separately with Attorney General William P. Barr, who immediately shot it down. And he directed one of his personal lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to ask high-ranking officials in the Department of Homeland Security if they could legally seize the machines. Again, he was rebuffed.

In the end, Mr. Trump did not move forward with the proposal — a decision he said in the interview with The Times that he regretted.

“Well, I should have,” he said.

It seems that Donald would hesitate only if he doubted the efficacy of such an attempt to steal an election because

Asked whether using the military to impound voting machines had been a viable option, the president questioned the sophistication of the National Guard.

“I don’t know that they are sophisticated enough,” he said. “You know, they’re good warriors. I’m not sure that they’re sophisticated enough in the ways of crooked Democrats, and the way they cheat, to figure that out.”

This is not ancient history nor merely theoretical as

Mr. Trump’s expression of regret, while somewhat vaguely worded, was nonetheless a warning sign that he had not given up on the idea that voting machines were dangerous or that they could be seized in an effort to curb fraud.

Just last week, he reposted several social media messages that continued to push the claim that Dominion machines had been rigged against him. And last month, he sought to pardon Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who is serving a nine-year prison sentence on state charges of tampering with Dominion machines in an effort to prove that they were used in a plot against Mr. T

Every good and authoritarian plan can use a trial run. In this case

At the same time, Mr. Trump has not been shy in using the National Guard, deploying thousands of its troops in recent months to cities that he says are overrun with crime. He has argued that the deployments are necessary to restore law and order to the cities, despite the objections of state and local leaders, who have called the moves unnecessary and unlawful.

The president’s use of the National Guard during his second term has become the focus of a multistate legal battle. While some cases remain largely unresolved, in December, the Supreme Court ruled against Mr. Trump for his deployment of troops in the Chicago area, citing an 1878 law, which bans the use of the military for domestic policing.

Since taking office again almost a year ago, Mr. Trump has sought to expand the scope of his powers and has wielded federal authority to exact retribution on political enemies and push his domestic agenda. And he has said he is willing to invoke the Insurrection Act and federalize some National Guard units if he feels it is important to do so.

Donald may cancel the mid-term elections if there appears to be a reasonable chance that Democrats retake the House of Representatives and/or the Senate.There are other options for a lawless President. He could send masked immigration agents to polling places in Democratic precincts. If Republican losses result in their loss of the House or Senate, the President could "suggest" to Senate President John Thune or House speaker Speaker in Name Only (SINO) Mike Johnson that he refuse to seat newly-elected Democrats.

Or he could have National Guard soldiers, the military, perhaps even ICE officers seize voting machines. It would be overly dramatic but the actor known for "You're fired!" has a flare for the dramatic.  Draconian and tyrannical, it would be right up his alley and makes any prediction for the eventual, effectual outcome of the 2026 elections the most unpredictable ever, notwihstanding Nancy Pelosi's confidence.

Share |

Dawn of Awareness, Possibly

Extraordinary blogger Steve M. approvingly quotes New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg in her column "By Killing Renee Good, ICE Sent a Message to Us All."

Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, told me that since ICE ramped up its operations in Minneapolis, it’s felt “like we are being inundated with a hostile paramilitary group that is mistreating, insulting, terrorizing our neighbors.” And the residents of Minneapolis have responded: “People have got their whistles, and they’ve got their little alert system to tell people ICE is in the neighborhood. They’ve been protesting. They’ve been out there trying to protect their neighbors.”

Many of these people probably believed that even in Trump’s America, citizens still have inviolable liberties that allow them to stand up to the jacked-up irregulars who’ve descended on their communities. The civil rights of immigrants have been profoundly curtailed; even green card holders are on notice that this government may detain and deport them simply for protesting. But Americans — particularly, let’s be honest, white Americans — might have thought themselves immune from ICE abuses.

The killing of Renee Nicole Good, a [white] mother of three and widow of a military veteran, tests that assumption.

S.M. concludes

The Republican base is as racist as you imagine. But the racism of the right is part of a larger belief system in which people with certain attributes -- white, right-wing, heterosexual, Christian, anti-feminist, pro-gun, and pro-fossil fuel -- are seen as better than everyone else in the world and deserving of a homeland in which no other people exist, or at least none have power, including mere voting power.

I don't think many of the anti-ICE protesters expected to be immune to ICE violence -- less susceptible, clearly, but certainly vulnerable. These people hate everyone who disagrees with them to at least some extent. Their core hatred might be racial, but they have plenty of rage to go around.

That's largely accurate. However, we knew that much of the GOP base is racist (or racially biased, as I would argue) and there is a core hatred of non-whites.

What we have never acknowledged- and which, to her credit, Goldberg comes close to doing- is that the hostility is usually not primarily grounded in ethnicity. The left is coming close now- with absolutely no help from the center- in acknowledging that most unjust state violence is not perpetrated for reasons of race.

We should have understood this in the summer and autumn of 2020. I tried, with limited success, to explain that there are many evils in this society and that most of them cannot justifiably be attributed to race. Instead, when the George Floyd protests came about, virtually no one (and "virtually" may be inaccurate) in the center or on the left found anything wrong with a movement called "Black Lives Matter."

Somehow, we got it into our collective heads that all - yes, all- of the problem with police violence against the public involved black civilians. There were victims and all were black, perhaps with a few Latinos.

There were three responses to the movement launched by the murder of George Floyd. There were supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, which in those heady days constituted a majority. Most of those opposed to the movement protested that "Blue Lives Matter." And then there were a few people, usually denounced as racists by not only leftists but also by centrists, who maintained "All Lives Matter."

What a bizarre claim! The notion that "all lives matter" was considered bigoted and/or bizarre not only by the left- progressives and liberals alike- but also by centrists. Meanwhile, conservatives countered with the politically wise "Blue Lives Matter." It was hard to argue against that slogan and the left was not chanting "civilian lives matter" nor claiming that police lives don't matter. Strategically, the politically correct "Blue Lives Matter" was the correct, albeit disingenuous, response. 

No one I heard or read ever suggested that not only was the slogan "black lives matter" exclusive of whites, but also of Latinos and Asian-Americans. Yet, while there was disproportionate (unjustified) police violence directed against blacks, there were other individuals who were victims of bad policing. I'm sure Daniel Shaver would agree, were he still alive to be asked about it. In December, 2017 The New York Times reported

Newly released body camera footage shows a police officer shooting an unarmed man in an Arizona hotel after the man sobbed and pleaded with officers not to shoot him.

On Jan. 18, 2016, six officers were called to a La Quinta Inn and Suites in Mesa, Ariz., after guests reported seeing a man with a gun in the window of a fifth-floor room. The video showed Mr. Shaver and a woman walking into a hallway as Philip Brailsford, a two-year veteran of the Mesa Police Department who was wearing the body camera, trained an AR-15 rifle on them.

Another officer can be heard ordering them to get on the floor and threatening to shoot if they do not comply.

“If you make a mistake, another mistake, there is a very severe possibility you’re both going to get shot,” the officer says in the video. He shouts at Mr. Shaver, “If you move, we are going to consider that a threat, and we are going to deal with it, and you may not survive it.”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Shaver says at one point. “Please do not shoot me,” he says at another.

The officer’s commands at times seemed contradictory.

“Do not put your hands down for any reason,” he tells Mr. Shaver. “Your hands go back in the small of your back or down, we are going to shoot you, do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” a tearful Mr. Shaver responds.

But immediately after, the officer commands, “Crawl towards me,” prompting Mr. Shaver to lower his hands to the floor and begin moving toward the camera.

A police report by an officer who reviewed the footage offered two possible explanations for why Mr. Shaver had bent his arm, the movement before the gunfire. It was “a very similar motion to someone drawing a pistol from their waist band,” the officer wrote, according to The Atlantic — but it “was also consistent with attempting to pull his shorts up as they were falling off.” No weapon was found on Mr. Shaver.

The Police Department fired Officer Brailsford two months after the shooting.

If you haven't already guessed, Shaver was white; if you didn't hear about this killing at the time, you weren't alone. It didn't fit the narrative of the left, the center, or the right (for the last group, because police can do no wrong). Interestingly

The jury deliberated for less than six hours before acquitting him. The acquittal came the same day that a judge in South Carolina sentenced Michael T. Slager, a white police officer, to 20 years in prison for the 2015 shooting of an unarmed black motorist, Walter L. Scott.

 

 Perhaps now, with the killing of Renee Gold, we will begin to understand that most law enforcement officers are fair and just and some, (being human) are not, as with persons in every profession. Of course, there is a danger of over-reaction, inaccurately concluding that state and local police officers are anything like Donald Trump's ICE, which is increasingly acting with impunity.

The upside of the killing of Good- as Goldberg notes- tests the assumption that whites are immune from our "inviolable liberties" being nullified by the Trump Administration and/or its lackeys. But Goldberg and S.M. need to understand that some of us, even back in 2020, knew that the heavy fist of law enforcement authorities was not confined to blacks. All of us- and our freedoms- matter, or at least should.

Share |

Dead Men Tell No Tales

Not true, Mr. Musk and  Mr. Virginia state legislator.

 

True https://t.co/ipD1kyQefl

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 9, 2026

In his press briefing on Thursday, Vice President J.D. Vance condemned "many people in the corporate media" for their coverage and added

And I say "attack" ver, very intentionally because this was an attack on federal law enforcement. This was an attack on law and order," Vance continued. "this was an attack on the American people."

Vance said the CNN headline also left out that the woman was there to "interfere with a lefitimate law enforcement operation in the United States of America" and is "part of a broader left-wing network" that attacks ICE officers and prevents them from doing their jobs.

"If the media wants to tell the truth, they ought to tell the truth, that a group of left-wing radicals have been working tirelessly, sometimes using domestic terror techniques, to try to amke it impossible for the President of the United States to do what the American people elcted him to do, which is enforce our immigration laws," Vance said.

 

 So Vance (presumably) believes Good's misbehavior "was an attack on law and order.... and on the American people." She was allegedly part of "a group of left-wing radicals (who) have been... using domestic terror techniques to try to make it impossible for the President of the United States to do what the American people elected him to do." Previously, he had stated "the reason this woman is dead is because she tried to ram somebody with her car."

Good may have been interfering with a law enfocement operation. However, once she began to pull away, she was removing herself from the situation. That did not satisfy, or even please, Officer Jonathan Ross. But in the Vice President's telling, Renee Good was a left-wing radical who attacked law and order with domestic terror techniques to obstruct the will of our President and of the American people and specifically tried to ram somebody with her car. 

She factually was not a domestic terrorist and Vance probably was aware that video would prove that she did not try to ram somebody. But, aware of the political difficulty that would ensue, he did not wish her dead. Oh, that makes so much sense.

Also not wishing her dead was the President himself. Yet,  in a Truth Social post of 3:28 p.m. on Pearl Harbor Day, Donald wrote/typed/dictated

I have just viewed the clip of the event which took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is a horrible thing to watch. The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and reisisting, who then violently, willfull, and viciously ran over the iCE officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense....

Let me see if  I understand this correctly. "No one of the right  wishes that person were dead." The leader of the right, Donald J. Trump,illegally orders boats, probably carrying drugs to Trinidad or Europe, blown up along with the occupants.  the leader of the right, He (presumably) believes that the ICE officer, in order to prevent being injured or  killed, shot a professional agitator who was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, then trying to run over the officer.

If Trump did in fact view the "clip" of the killing, he would know that the Good woman did not try to run the woman over, which would prove very inconvenient for the Administration once it was widely seen. She was a dangerous radical but he's sorr she's decesdl. But he did not wish the Good woman dead, even though if he did watch the clip he claims to have watched, he  would know that big trouble awaited- if she had lived.

President Trump and Vice President Vance may not be glad that Renee Good is dead.  Call them "relieved."

Share |

Taking a Scalp

Stephen Miller got his trophy.

On Halloween, the Deputy White House Chief of Staff, who reportedly is in charge of immigration policy, appeared on Fox News. Host Will

Cain asked Miller under what federal authority the Trump administration could arrest Pritzker if the governor tried to arrest ICE agents.

“To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties,” Miller said. “And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.”

ICE officers thereby were given a "get out of jail free" card. And on January 7, 2026, one emboldened immigration agent decided to take advantage of Miller's largesse.

Of course, this would be legitimate were Renee Nicole Good attempting to stop the officer or trying to obstruct him. This does not appear to have occurred.

One officer approached the driver's side of the car and may have yelled for Good to get out of the car. Another officer was moving from the front passenger side to the front driver's side, whereupon the motorist steered clockwise, away from the officer, who then fired the fatal shot. Former FBI supervisor Rob

D’Amico said the officer’s attempt to open the door may have distracted the woman, causing her not to notice the other officer in front of the vehicle, and that better training could have helped prevent the situation.

“It reminds me of a time that one of the first arrests I went out in Miami, I actually got in front of a vehicle, and my supervisor grabbed me after, and I think he was pretty strict with me. He said, ‘Look, people don’t block vehicles. Vehicles block vehicles,’” he recounted. “Don’t put yourself in a situation where you then have to employ deadly force if that vehicle comes at you, because, one, you’re not going to stop it. You’re going to get hit no matter what.”

Horrible, foolish police work, in which authorities escalate rather than de-escalate a situation, is not necessarily illegal, but it is very important. Few if any in the government (of course) or the media seem interested in the motive of the three ICE officers who approached Good's vehicle. They might find out that that the motorist was partially blocking the roadway and that good police work would entail approaching the vehicle in an unthreating manner and ordering the motorist to leave the area. 

The purpose, presumably, would be to clear the area, which Good was trying to do as she began to drive away. And if that was not the aim of the officers, law enforcement was even more irresponsible than the appears from the video.

Apprised of this incident, Stephen Miller's heart leapt. So did J.D. Vance's heart, and that of Donald Trump. Jesus wept.

 

Share |

Insidious Intent

Predator (Merriam-Webster): 

1) an organism that primarily obtains food by the killing and consuming of other orgnaisms; especially, an animal that preys on other animals;

2) one who injures or exploits others for personal gain or profit.

This is repulsive:

Rep. Ogles: "It's important that we have a stake in Greenland, that they are quite frankly a protectorate of the US. They've been in relationship with Denmark -- that needs to end. We have spilled more blood protecting Greenland than the Danes ... we are the dominant predator… pic.twitter.com/uAtHMMV0hL

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 7, 2026

The USA does have a stake in Greenland. However, Danish involvement has been deeper and more lengthy. And according to Mikkel Runge Ollesen of the Danish Institute for Inernational Studies

When the monarchy of Denmark and Norway broke apart in 1814, Denmark kept Greenland. Danish-Greenlandic colonial relations in the 19th and early 20th centuries were characterized by a Danish paternalistic policy for cautious development, ensuring that Greenland would be a profitable colony. In 1916, Denmark’s rights to Greenland were confirmed by the United States, as part of a deal that facilitated the American purchase of the Danish West Indies. A controversy concerning a Norwegian claim to parts of Greenland ended in 1933, when the Permanent Court of International Justice, founded by the League of Nations, ruled against Norway.

Allen Frazer on the Military.com website explains that as combat reached the Arctic in 1943, the Danish-led  Sledge Patrol comprising Danes, Norwegians, and Greenlanders, was formed. Using its reports American planes bombed the German base on Greenland and later went to destroy the camp. However, they found it abandoned, merely capturing a lone German staffing the station. Then 

In October 1944, USCGS Eastwind seized the German weather station on Little Koldewey and took twelve German prisoners. Eleven days later, she boarded and captured the trawler Externsteine, taking seventeen more prisoners and ending Germany’s weather operations on the coast. These were the only direct engagements between American and German troops on Greenland.

That was the first presence of the USA in Greenland and, Ollesen notes, in

1949, the United States and Denmark became allies through NATO. During the Cold War and the decades after, the U.S. safeguarded its security interests in Greenland: tracking Russian missiles, bomber planes, and nuclear-armed submarines from that location. This became the basis for the “Greenland card” in U.S.-Danish relations: the idea that base rights in Greenland constituted an important contribution from Denmark and Greenland to the U.S. and NATO.

So the USA, as well as Denmark and Norway, collaborated to throw the Nazis out of Greenland in world War II. This apparently transpired without a staggering loss of life, or "blood spilled" as Representative Ogles of Tennessee would put it.  This is not- or, rather, should not be- a competition as to whether Danes or Americans have "spilled more blood protecting Greenland."

Merriam-Webster, again; a "protectorate" is "the relationship of superior authority assumed by one power or state over a dependent one."  Obviously, President Trump and adviser Stephen Miller wouldn't be threatening to gain control (in whatever way) over Greenland if the latter were already a protectorate of the USA. Presumably, Representative Ogles invoked the term "protectorate" because it harkens back to the word "protect" and implies, incorrectly, that helping to protect a territory results in the latter being a protectorate. "Protecting" may be necessary; it is not sufficient.

The USA has no nationals security interest in acquiring Greenland because our national security interests already are promoted by our presence in Greenland. The New York Times reported early last year that the Air Force and Space Force personnel at Pituffit Space Bse (formerly, Thule Air Base), "handle missile defense and space surveillance and the Upgraded Early Warning Radar (which) can detect ballistic misslies in thir early trajectory of flight."  A Danish deefense analyst says the base is "where the U.S. can detect a launch, calculate the trajectory and activate its missile defense systems." 

Consequently, the status quo helps Greenlanders, but especially USA national security. If they want to opt out, they can do so by referendum. A poll taken twelve months revealed majority support for becoming independent, yet with 45% opposing independence if the standard of living would be at all harmed.  That would be likely because

the Greenlandic government remains dependent on a yearly block grant from Denmark of roughly $600 million, as well as on the Danish state supporting services in areas such as defense, coast guard, and law enforcement. Greenlandic independence, therefore, depends on substantial continued Danish assistance after independence, something the Greenlandic government has yet to convince Denmark to accept.

What kind of a person would argue in full view that his country is the "dominant predator"? A supporter of Donald Trump would. The head of the Washington, D.C.-based security think tank Artic Institute believes it would "mean the end of NATO" (and the "U.S. would be .... shooting itself in the foot and waving goodbye to an alliance it has helped created." A former commander of U.S. troops in Europe argues that also a "loss of trust by key allies.... culd result in a eduction in their willingness to share intelligence with the U.S. or a reduction in access to bases across Europe. Both of these would be severely damagint to America's security."

Destructive to NATO and damaging to America's security? That sounds like a win-win to a President who believes his country is "evil" and a congressman who craves recognition as a "predator."

Share |