The President also tweeting tonight, from what I understand, is postponing his trip
to Denmark which was scheduled next week.
Can you give the reason he gave for this because you would think it's made up?
I think you know why.
Yes.
You would think this is something on Colbert, but it's real.
You know, the stuff on Colbert is real, so it might be on Colbert.
Go ahead.
This could be summed up Anderson in one word and one very large place and that is Greenland
that we know the President has had his eyes on recently.
As you know, the President has talked about the United State purchasing Greenland and
then Denmark, which has control over Greenland.
Greenland is a semiautonomous part of Denmark.
Denmark has said no, Greenland is not for sale.
And just recently the Danish Prime Minister has said that that was an absurd prospect,
that somehow Denmark would sell Greenland to the Untied States.
We should point out that the President has tweeted about this just in the last several
minutes saying that because of the Danish Prime Minister's comments, he is going to
be canceling his trip to Copenhagen that was scheduled to happen in early September and
so, just because of this one issue of Greenland the President is calling off a trip to a foreign
country to meet with the Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen to talk about, I suppose, other
issues.
But now that Greenland is off the table the President is saying that he appreciates her
for saying that and her looks forward to rescheduling sometime in the future.
A White House official said that visit to the entire country of Denmark for the president
is off Anderson— Yeah no that makes sense.
Of course.
Yeah exactly.
I did talk to a source close to the White House earlier this evening Anderson on a serious
note who suggested that this is one of the President’s bright shiny objects that he
threw this out there this evening after a very tough news day after some of his comments
earlier today about Jewish people showing their disloyalty if the vote for Democrats,
and so on and so thats the suspicion amongst some people in Trump world tonight.
Yeah, you know what, if you can't be tough with the NRA, go after the Danish Prime Minister.
There you go.
This is CNN’s Jim Acosta and Anderson Cooper, and if it seems like they’re struggling
to keep straight faces, that’s because it’s 2019 and the president of the United States
is trying to buy another country.
…And throwing a tantrum that he can’t.
In a way, this is the perfect microcosm for Trump’s fake populism.
Rather than focus on issues that are impacting REAL Americans, like lowering the cost of
prescription drugs, like passing common sense gun safety measures, like ending his disastrous
trade war with China that’s driving up the cost of consumer goods, Trump is instead focused
on some shiny, expensive thing 3,000 miles away that’ll have exactly no effect on our
lives.
And this is the guy that the working class was convinced would help them.
I don’t want to speak for anyone else but…
I’m not sure this is what they had in mind.
But news reports like this one by Jim Acosta and Anderson Cooper flooded the airwaves yesterday,
both at home and around the world.
And because they were all at Trump’s expense, he realized that HE’S become the butt of
the joke, that the world is laughing at HIM.
And so, to compensate, Trump took to the White House lawn today to rescind his acceptance
of the Danish prime minister’s refusal, and instead attack her—
Denmark, I looked forward to going but I thought the Prime Minister's statement that it was
absurd, that it was an absurd idea was nasty, it was an inappropriate statement.
All she had to do was say, no we wouldn't be interested but we can't treat the United
States of American the way they treated us under President Obama.
I thought it was a very not nice way of saying something, they could have told me no this
is something that has been discussed for many years.
Harry Truman had the idea of Greenland, I had the idea, other people have had the idea,
it goes back into the early 1900s.
Harry Truman thought very strongly that it was a good idea.
I think it's a good idea because Denmark is losing seven hundred million dollars a year
with it, that doesn't do them any good but all they had to do was say no we would rather
not do that or we'd rather not talk about it.
Don't say what an absurd idea that is because she's not talking to me, excuse me, she's
not talking to me, she's talking to the United States of America.
You don't talk to the United States that way.
He thinks that the way out of this is to prove that he’s a tough guy, but digging in his
heels for something that is already so earth shatteringly absurd isn’t going to do the
trick.
If his ego is that bruised because people are laughing at him over his failed efforts
to buy Greenland, is his solution seriously to train the spotlight on it even further
and turn it into an actual international controversy?
And he was worried that WOMEN are too emotional to be president.
And what’s worse, he didn’t even stop there.
Trump then took to Twitter, writing “For the record, Denmark is only at 1.35% of GDP
for NATO spending.
They are a wealthy country and should be at 2%.
We protect Europe and yet, only 8 of the 28 NATO countries are at the 2% mark.
The United States is at a much, much higher level than that because of me, these countries
have agreed to pay ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS more.”
And while he’s content to pat his own back and put Denmark on blast, Politfact noted
that the increase in spending was in large part attributed to a NATO spending pledge
from before Trump took office, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But look, his petty Twitter attacks aside, the fact is that not only is Denmark an ally,
but they lost 43 of their own troops in Afghanistan and another 7 in Iraq while supporting the
United States-led coalition.
For a country of just over 5 million that’s NOT used to fighting in wars, that’s no
small sacrifice.
And yet that’s how strong their commitment is to the United States, to NATO, to protecting
democracy.
But still Trump will attack their prime minister while gushing over Kim Jong-un’s love letters,
while siding with Putin over our own intelligence agencies when it comes to their election interference,
while inviting a murderous Duterte to the White House, while cheering on Bolsonaro as
the Brazilian rainforest burns to ashes.
He might claim that no one has done more for NATO than him, but he undermines NATO and
everything it represents every time he opens his mouth.
And no one would have ever believed that it would be the president of the United States
doing the most to undermine democracies around the world--
But it’s real.