Greetings and welcome to this 30th edition of the Carnival of Fools, on a day dedicated to them. Since this marks the convergence of my weekly newsletter with the (informal) national holiday celebrating folly, let’s let it flow unabated — and spill over into tomorrow, courtesy of the Trump administration. This is, after all, the greatest show on earth. But alas, first we must put the (little) boot in.
JD Vance Conquers Greenland
Some news at the end of last week gave me fair opportunity to indulge my inner classicist and recall one of the less bloody anecdotes attributed to Caligula, the Roman emperor primarily known to history for getting Penthouse magazine disastrously involved in the world of filmmaking. In the spring of A.D. 40, the emperor announced his intent to conquer the hitherto unsubdued island of Britannia for the Roman Empire. After unexplained delays and mutinies within the army while gathered for embarkation upon the shores of northern Gaul, Caligula changed his mind — and before turning around for home ordered his soldiers to declare war upon the sea instead, hurling their spears into the waves and beating the tide with their swords. The centurions were ordered to collect seashells to bring back to Rome as “the spoils of war.” (Morale among the men was no doubt superb; Caligula would not survive to see another spring.)
So it goes with JD Vance’s notably pointless three-hour visit to Greenland on March 28. It opened exactly zero diplomatic fronts or new lines of negotiations with either native Greenlanders or the Danish government, which exercises sovereignty over their territory, but at least resounded with an overall sense of stupendous meaninglessness. Vance toured Pituffik Space Base, located on the remote northwestern coast of the island, and then delivered a brief speech to the assembled servicemen. There being not much else to do in the middle of nowhere, he promptly flew home, where he got into an online fight with a Twitter conservative who noticed his inability to grasp basic macroeconomics.
This wasn’t quite how the trip was supposed to go. For those unaware, Vance’s surprise visit to our installation on the island comes in the context of the Trump administration’s frequent and clumsy announcements that it seeks to annex Greenland as U.S. territory. Trump reiterates this on Truth Social as often as he states that he wants Canada to become America’s 51st state. (Given that he is apparently quite serious about Greenland, an uncomfortably obvious question lingers as to his true view of Canada.) This is naturally rather unpopular with both native Greenlanders and the Danes, who are, incidentally, one of our more reliable European allies.
Initially only Vance’s wife Usha had been scheduled to travel to Greenland, as a goodwill meet-and-greet with the civilian population in other regions of the island. Then, midweek, Vance suddenly announced he would be coming along — with an entourage, no less. If the idea was to ratchet up the diplomatic pressure on the Danish government by turning the trip into a semi-official state visit, it backfired; all planned stops were canceled save at our own military installation, where the vice president and American officials were of course welcome.
And what an entourage it was! Before Vance spoke to the gathered troops, he introduced his traveling posse of “special guests”: National Security Adviser Mike Waltz (last seen accidentally inviting Jeffrey Goldberg to help plan Houthi air strikes with the boys), Senator Mike Lee (last seen calling for Prince Harry’s deportation), and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright (thrilled not to have been seen doing anything whatsoever, even assuming office). Each of them spoke briefly, saying nothing of interest.
Then Vance took the podium to deliver a restatement of the same non sequitur argument the administration has been making for months now: Denmark is failing to spend the money necessary to properly defend Greenland, which is why Greenland should choose to become part of the United States:
Our argument is very simple. It is not with the people of Greenland, who I think are incredible and have an incredible opportunity here. Our argument really is with the leadership of Denmark, which is under-invested in Greenland and under-invested in security architecture. That simply must change. It is the policy of the United States that that will change.
It is a policy sure to endear America to Denmark at the negotiating table. (It does not seem to have endeared America to native Greenlanders, what few of them exist.) Nobody can quite understand the Trump administration’s approach to this issue; a number of policymakers agree that there actually might be some kind of potentially serious deal for America to get done with Greenland and the Danes on resource exploration and exploitation — or at least there might have been, had Trump not sown such ill will with his clumsy threats of outright annexation.
The reality is that Trump is visibly desperate to “add land” to the United States for his own ego and legacy’s sake, and the rest of the world’s leaders would sooner sign their own death warrants than give it to him for precisely that reason. We have reached the limits — or rather, the consequences — of the Trumpian style of diplomacy. As for JD Vance, his portion was to give a set of empty remarks, proclaim eventual victory, go home, and pick a fight online.
Happy Liberation Day
Congratulations! Today is now only the third-worst day of the month! Yes, April Fools’ Day is an obnoxious tradition that ceased being funny somewhere around middle school — and is never amusing in the context of serious breaking news. But I think we’d all agree it’s preferable to Tax Day. Now comes the Trump administration, like the absolute legends they are, with a bold bid to add a new entry to the calendar: They have declared tomorrow, April 2 — the day Trump plans to impose global tariffs on every nation and industry that imposes a tariff on the United States — to be “Liberation Day.” What you thought might just be another day of global economic chaos is now a brand initiative. There is even talk among the administration and its allies of making it a national holiday.
This seems like a brilliant idea to me. In fact, my lone objection is that “Liberation Day” is rather weakly worded stuff, the sort of vaguely simpering zombie-Reaganite language redolent of the Bush era. Liberation? We are not petty slaves, we are manly MAGA Americans! Why not something more vigorous? Why not a name that rings resoundingly with Trumpian optimism, announcing that things have changed forever for the better? Why this, when “Mission Accomplished Day” was right there for the taking?
What is there even to say about Trump’s tariff “plans” that hasn’t been said already? Nobody seems to have even the slightest clue what they are, what they will be applied to, or whether they will survive till the end of the week. Exclusions and carve-outs will be declared. Entire industries will be bought off. Markets will quiver and gyrate with uncertainty. Expect that uncertainty to continue, even as the economy shudders under rising costs: Trump has gathered all the skeins of United States trade and tariff policy into his hands and relishes his ability to keep the world at the mercy of his whims. He’ll likely never settle on a predictable policy.
And slowly, behind the scenes, small businesses and manufacturers across America who depend on foreign parts or resources — who depend on predictability, more than anything else — will see their supply chains disrupted and their margins distorted, perhaps permanently. Consumer goods will cost more as the middle and working classes suffer the most. America’s first-quarter growth under the new Trump administration was just pegged at a shockingly anemic 0.3 percent; Liberation Day yet looms in the future. Trump is reportedly going around threatening automakers not to raise prices after the tariffs raise their production costs, as if he can order them to simply go bankrupt. Will he be able to do the same to his voters?
Donald Trump Will Not Serve a Third Term
During an interview with NBC News over the weekend, Donald Trump hinted that he might serve a third term in office, and that there were “methods” of getting past the 22nd Amendment, which bars any president from serving more than two terms, should he so desire.
He will not, and there are not. Trump pushes out outrageous statements like these not because he is a cynical man intentionally seeking a reaction (at this point I am in fact willing to buy that he would appoint himself king if permitted) but rather because he is feeling frustrated in the political moment. His third-term talk is noteworthy only as unwitting self-revelation.
Trump’s frustration will only grow over the coming weeks. And that is exactly as much commentary as this particular topic deserves.
Until next week.