House Republicans were looking for opportunities to do some PDA for the incoming president before he was formally sworn into office — knowing that theatrical allegiance doesn’t sway Donald Trump, no matter how unserious the content.
This is to be expected. House Republicans, who have accepted Trump as their party’s leader for the past few years, have long followed this playbook to publicly keep themselves at Trump’s mercy: Trump mumbles about something in public (or shouts in all caps about it on Truth Social). The world’s medium-term goals turn its vision into incoherent or insurmountable legislation. These proposals don’t go anywhere — often exposing the GOP’s dysfunction in Congress along the way — but they do succeed in helping create a news cycle of even more deranged Trumpmania. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The difference this time is that Republicans have a trifecta, and some of the not-so-serious stuff currently being used as a performative loyalty test to Trump’s imperial hallucinations could actually make a dent.
Take, for example, Trump’s ongoing obsession with the idea that the United States could somehow buy Greenland once Trump is sworn in in a few days. Trump has been floating this idea for some time, and he recently laid out this and other unfinished visions of an expansionist American empire during a “foreign policy” press conference last week.
Just a few days later, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, introduced legislation giving the president the authority “to seek to enter into negotiations with the Kingdom of Denmark to secure the acquisition of Greenland by the United States.” The bill bears a cartoonish title.Let’s make Greenland great again“, and was first reported by Fox News. Ogles has 10 co-sponsors joining him in proposing the bill.
While the leaders of Denmark and Greenland have publicly criticized, condemned and opposed the idea of a US acquisition of Greenland, Trump has not backed down, even suggesting that using some type of economic or military force to that end might be on the table.
At the same press conference last week, Trump outlined other imperialist priorities for his administration, such as acquiring the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico “America’s Gulf.”
In contrast, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Dusty Johnson (R-SC) have both put forward proposals to put fever dreams in motion legislatively. Green introduced a bill that would change the name of the Gulf to “America’s Gulf” on maps and other official documents in the United States. Johnson introduced a bill that would allow talks to begin about purchasing the canal.
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