Trump and the Danes — does it get any more absurd?

© 2019 Peter Free

 

21 august 2019

 

 

You have heard by now that . . .

 

. . . America's commander in chief wanted to buy Greenland from Denmark.

 

And Denmark — evidently wanting to hold onto the one thing that keeps it in international news — wouldn't sell. Even if such a sale were legally and technically possible.

 

 

President Trump (predictably) pouted in spoiled American toddler style

 

He pounded his fists and cancelled a scheduled September trip to the Land of Danes.

 

 

So . . .

 

Some Danes took umbrage to this anti-diplomatic slight:

 

 

“This goes against everything, and it’s a big insult to the Queen as the host,” Soren Espersen, an MP from the Danish People’s Party, told news agency Ritzau.

 

A fellow lawmaker and former speaker of parliament, Pia Kjaersgaard, blasted the US leader for showing a “complete lack of respect” and for being “rude to the Danish people and the Queen who had invited him.”

 

The same sentiment was voiced by former foreign minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, who told Jyllands-Posten that by abruptly cancelling his visit Trump has insulted the monarch.

 

“Trump lives on another planet. Self-centered and disrespectful,” Pernille Skipper, a lawmaker from the Red-Green Alliance, tweeted.

 

As for Queen Margrethe herself, she did not publicly speak on the matter.

 

The spokesperson for the royal family, Lene Balleby, however, told AP that the news of Trump cancelling his trip came as “a surprise.”

 

© 2019 RT, Trump accused of ‘insulting’ Danish queen by cancelling trip over Greenland snub, RT.com (21 August 2019)

 

 

Surely . . .

 

. . . such mighty Danish pushback will grab the American president's attention?

 

 

The moral? — The only thing that Danish leaders accomplished in their manners-based tussle with President Trump is — looking idiotic themselves

 

Two points —

 

 

First

 

You don't do yourself any reputational favors by stooping to dance with a musclebound moron.

 

This is a subject that I suspect Xi Jinping smiles about in his Confucian-based, communist and power-building sleep.

 

Second

 

Minor players' dignities are best preserved by letting the world draw unaided conclusions, as to who's the idiot and who isn't.

 

Blood royalty is irrelevant among modernity's hegemons. Resorting to the archaic concept only underscores impotence.