A player tees off during practice day at the first World Ice Golf Championships in Uummannaq, Greenland, March 26, 1999.
ALLSPORT
Now that we’ve all had a taste of life in Greenland, I’m sure we’re all ready to go.
Actually, last weekend Fort Worth was colder than Nuuk.
Greenland would have felt like a vacation.
It never got below freezing in Nuuk on Jan. 24-26. The highs were in the 40s.
Our high temperatures were even colder than their lows. On Jan. 25, when it was 10 degrees here, it was 37 there.
Obviously, they don’t have Stock Show weather.
If it weren’t 2,900 miles away, I’d consider a January vacation.
You’ll be happy to know that according to our local Republican congressmen, the Donald Trump administration has no intention whatsoever of bothering those nice fisherman and fjord tour guides and coffee baristas in Nuuk.
No sir, no plans whatsoever. Just ignore all that bluster from the blusterer-in-chief.
All this talk of ordering the military to plan a “possible invasion of Greenland”? Or Trump saying the U.S. must take over the Danish colony “whether they like it or not”?
Worry not.
Why, that’s just how he talks.
“This is President Trump,” said U.S. Rep. Keith Self, a Collin County Republican, on WFAA/Channel 8 “Inside Texas Poltiics.”
“This is the way he does business.”
Self said Trump “plows the ground, and people get upset. Then he says, ‘Well, why don’t we do this?’ — and they come around.”
Well, sure.
A lot of countries come around at hearing the term “invasion.”
Denmark and America’s NATO allies will just “get over it,” Self said.
“We’re not going to own it,” he said. “It’s going to be — I don’t know, simply leased.”
In other words, nice chunk of ice you got there, Denmark.
Be a shame if something happened to it. Maybe you oughta lease it out.
Self said outright that we want Greenland for the minerals. Oh, and for defense against Russia.
U.S. Rep. Roger Williams of Willow Park told WFAA that the Greenland talk is not a threat.
“Right now it’s a business deal,” said Williams, a car dealer.
U.S. Rep. Jake Ellzey of Ellis County was even more dismissive.
He said it’s all show.
“The message here is not to NATO or Denmark,” Ellzey told WFAA.
It’s to China and Russia, he said: “The message from Donald Trump and this administration is, don’t mess with Greenland.”
Ellzey described Trump’s years-long Greenland pursuit as a “symbol.”
“Nobody’s talking about taking it over,” Ellzey said.
Really?
That’s not what Denmark heard.
“The world order as we know it that we have been fighting for 80 years is ove,r and I don’t think it will return,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Wednesday at Sciences Po University in Paris, according to Reuters.
Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said his people are “afraid and scared.”
See? They’re getting worried for no reason at all.
Just ask our congressmen.
Bud Kennedy
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