August 17, 2019

The Daily News Just Hit Trump With a Headline for the Ages

“Fjord to Trump: Drop Dead.”

A sailboat travels through the mountainscapes in East Greenland.Getty

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The Saturday edition of New York’s Daily News elbowed President Donald Trump in the wake of backlash against reports that the president had inquired about the possibility of the United States purchasing Greenland. “Fjord to Trump: Drop Dead,” it read.

The headline was a reference to criticism that members of the governments of Greenland and Denmark directed President Trump’s way on Friday after a report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that the president had hopes of purchasing the European island nation, which is considered a semiautonomous territory.

“Greenland is not for sale and cannot be sold, but Greenland is open for trade and cooperation with other countries—including the United States,” Kim Kielsen, Greenland’s premier, said in a statement according to Danish news agency Ritzau. “I hope it is a joke—to not just buy a country but also its people,” Martin Lidegaard, the chairman of the Danish parliament’s foreign policy committee told the Washington Post.

The president had reportedly been interested in the island because of its vast natural resources—in particular, its anticipated richness in offshore oil resources that will be made available as the country’s vast ice sheets melt due to climate change. He also sees the island, which is the world’s largest, as a strategic national security perch in the northern realms of the Atlantic Ocean.

Greenland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs seized the unexpected spotlight to remind the world of its admirable qualities—like its emphasis on renewable energy and adventure tourism business—with a subtle tweak at the president. “We’re open for business, not for sale,” it tweeted from its official account on Friday.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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