alt Hacker News> Very easy to dismiss it as the rantings of a madman but no-one is holding him back.
Does anyone really need to? We're not getting Greenland and everyone knows it, ESPECIALLY the people screeching the most about it. Trump's whole thing is giving the media lots of fresh meat to go wild over so they're distracted. I'm sure it's some sort of Sun Tzu thing he read about and has latched on to.
However, this one in particular is really baffling in that he can't let it go and it just makes everything worse.
> People didn't take the tariff bluster seriously and then it became very real.
I mean, not really? There's been some tariffs here and there but nowhere near what was originally claimed, things have been walked back and forth multiple times, etc. That's really what's caused the most damage, the uncertainty moreso than the actual tariffs. And this is also something he's particular fixated on and I wish he'd drop since it's obvious it's not going to have the intended outcome.
> Does anyone really need to?
It feels like the rest of the post answers your own question. Yes, Vance and basically everyone below him know full well that the US acquiring Greenland would be utterly pointless and utterly disastrous.
But he won't let it go, and in the mean time he's doing lots of stuff with real world consequences like tariffs and incinerating alliances to try to get people to agree with his stupid idea. Can't even use it as a "negotiation chip" when its the fruits of actual completed negotiations being threatened and the US could put any military installations in Greenland they wanted if they said "please" instead of "we are going to take you over".