Brandon Gill attended Dartmouth, where he headed the infamously conservative Dartmouth Review. After graduation he founded the D.C. Enquirer. He's married to Dinesh D'Souza's daughter. A couple of years ago he moved from New York to Texas in order to run for Congress. In November he won. He's young conservative royalty.
Rep. Brandon Gill: "President Trump is bringing us into a golden age of America. This is the new Manifest Destiny. Reacquiring the Panama Canal, acquiring Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. This is the light of America expanding." pic.twitter.com/emC1yGUx3e
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 8, 2025
Where do conservatives come up with such a steady stream of these people? They're willing to pretend support for anything with no apparent embarrassment. It's remarkable.
Brandon Gill attracted to Trump? Reminds me of flies being attracted to a turd. Seems sometimes like there is a near infinite number of flies and turds in the world.
Tee hee, love it!
“Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others.
The same applies when you are stupid.”
Pretty much says it all.
It's the money. Plus, the joy of repeatedly duping the same rubes over and over, getting them to give you what you want and thinking they're helping themselves.
It's not just the money. Plenty of these guys really are stupid dipshits who think US territorial expansion by force or threat of force is a good idea we should pursue. Conquest is strong, good and manly like Trump. Peaceful relations with and respect for neighbors is only something Democrat pussies support.
It's gonna be a long four years.
I'll add: the people who should be most worried about Trump's Lebensraum vision are the Taiwanese. Think about it.
When Xi and Putin get up in the morning, the first thing they do is utter a silent prayer of thanks for the idiocy of the American electorate.
America is not the country I imagined it was just 10 years ago. I’m pretty cynical and disillusioned by now. Why fight for this? Take care of close friends and like minded family.
Trump. He made an already disreputable party even more so.
Light? Darkness he means.
Fools gold.
They see themselves in prosperous and powerful positions from attaching themselves to Trump.
(And, the way America is trending, they just may be right.)
The "no apparent embarrassment" isn't incidental to this phenomenon -- it is the phenomenon. And it's not best thought of as a deficit or a lack, but rather as a superpower.
Contrary to the implication of the post, people will NOT support Trump no matter what he says. Witness the boos he got when he tried to take credit for vaccines. If he ever became decent and reasonable, he would fall off the political map.
Trump's achievement is the excision of shame from the American psyche. He has given people permission to be awful and think of themsleves as saints. And if you're ignorant? Well, you know more than a PhD epidemiologist.
That's pretty much the entirety of the Trump phenomenon. Foolishness and evil have always been a little bit disreputable, and thanks to Trump, the fools and villains can be proud of their intelligence and virtue.
+1.
Fools and villains all coming out from behind the curtain now. No shame of being either.
Yeah, I’m from the deep south, which I guess is now ready to “rise again”— meaning drag the rest of the country down to their level. That’s how it’s wired there; small, practically meaningless virtues and massive, debilitating structural failures. And the cities aren’t going to be able to prop up state economies or pretensions of culture for much longer, so we’ll see just how eager Scott Softwareguy is to move his daughters to shithole states for the bigger closets and bonus rooms.
OMG. I live in the South, too, and this is the best summation I have found:
"... small, practically meaningless virtues and massive, debilitating structural failures."
(nonexistent) Thumbs up. But maybe proud of their "intelligence" and "virtue."
Make Imperialism Great Again!
What makes you think Gill is pretending? Pretty much the entire party has gone stark raving mad led by the Loon in Chief. One thing that I would do if I were the Greenlanders is to put a clause in their draft constitution that all natural resources including mineral rights are owned by the state. Regardless of whether or not the US "acquires" Greenland, or Canada for that matter, you can see the sharks are circling hoping to become the next oil or "rare earth" barons once the ice melts.
One of the things that makes a good shyster sales guy great is the ability to believe in the pitch no matter how absurd. They end up buying their own bullshit.
"you can see the sharks are circling hoping to become the next oil or 'rare earth' barons once the ice melts."
None of those sharks thinks on those timescales. The average depth of the ice sheet in Greenland is over a mile. Yes, climate change is melting it, and yes, climate is warming way faster than we can deal with, but: no CEO out there is thinking to themselves "Sweet! If Trump seizes Greenland, in just half a century whoever replaces my replacement's replacement will have a shot at capping off their career by securing a Greenland oil lease from the federal government!"
(Nor is it clear why said CEO couldn't just try to secure an oil lease from the Danes or Greenlanders--nothing about Greenland being a US territory or state makes it any easier for companies to drill or mine it; nor does it change anything for anybody who buys oil or minerals from said companies).
The only reason we are talking about Greenland at all is because some goddamn cosmetics exec six years ago said something to Trump about the US acquiring Greenland, Trump latched onto it (probably because he has no fucking clue what a Mercator projection is) and then Trump got all offended when the Danes laughed at him.
So now Trump is rambling like the moron he is about seizing it, because that's all he knows how to do. He has no plan (let alone the "conceptions of a plan") as to how to actually acquire Greenland; nor does he have any understanding of how to go about creating such a plan, or even what the consequences of any such plan might be.
He'll rant about it, and probably scream about it at cabinet meetings and demand that various officials who have nothing to do with international relations (like Sec. Interior, or the AG) fix things for him, until finally some aide will placate him by pointing out that we already have a fucking military base in Greenland and that maybe (a) we could expand its size, and (b) could rename it the Trump Base; whether or not (a) happens, (b) will happen, and Trump will loudly proclaim what a great negotiator he was and how the Danes came to him with tears in their eyes and called him "Sir" and offered to give America a Trump Base, and then he'll go back to sucking his diet coke and watching teevee.
That's my prediction, anyway, based on how he "handled" other international issues, like North Korea's nuclear program. He might also declare that Greenland is "on notice" and then never explain what that means, like he did with Iran, too.
Nailed it. There just isn't a rational explanation for the Greenland fixation. It's pure idiocy from a thin skinned dumb ass. He must be retaliating for some perceived slight, but who the hell knows?
10+
Provinces and territories manage their own natural resources, including forests, except on federal lands, such as First Nations lands and national parks. Each province and territory sets the policies, legislation and other regulatory matters for its own resources.
State's Rights!!!!
What makes you think Gill is pretending?
Yep. Kevin constantly imparts more judgment and intelligence to this crowd than is warranted.
Old enough to immediately wonder if this guy is related to Brendan Gill (New Yorker writer) which would say something about how the country club Republicans (Dad's generation, in other words), have seamlessly become the MAGA generation.
Also old enough to know how influential the Dartmouth Review has been. For instance, Laura Ingraham got her start there, as I recall. Was one of many "conservative" campus papers started with lots of funding in the Reagan era.
As was his father in law.
It's because social conservatives have nearly zero interactions with anyone who isn't on their own brainwave, or an accepted part of their hierarchy.
For them, everyone and everything else is beneath contempt.
To be fair, though, the same can be said of us. I have zero conservative friends now, they've all gone insane. We did the holiday thing with my husbands conservative family and it was a blessing that nobody mentioned Trump or the election - we were planning on taking a hasty leave is that topic opened up.
But social conservatives have always been like this, and in those interactions they do have with people outside their distortion field they have absolutely never noticed how difficult it can be for so many others to spend any time with them.
And if they do notice they'll think, well we tried, we did our bit.
I have known some Dartmouth grads personally and professionally. By and large they were normal decent people. But a couple of them ... well they fit the same mold as young master Gill: arrogant, cocky and at the same time nasty and defensive about their reactionary political and social stances. I'm sure that type can be found on many campuses but somehow Dartmouth seems to have attracted more than their fair share.
Always remember that Faber College in Animal House was modeled on Dartmouth.
TIL Dinesh D'Souza has a daughter.
Ew.
Probably someone he's paying to let him say that so he can seem normal.
No way MAGA royalty is getting buy just on a congressional salary. Guarantee you she's hooked up with a 400k/year sinecure at a right wing think take. Spousal income is the real gravy train.
getting *by*
lol
The crew always agrees with the mob boss. They know the price of not doing so.
I mean, Rick Scott just said it would be exciting to seize Greenland, Panama, so the supply well seems to run deep
Another quote from the same guy:
“ Rep. Brandon Gill: "Listen, I think that the people of Panama, I think that the people of Greenland, I think that the people of Canada for that matter should be honored that President Trump wants to bring these territories under the American fold."”
What an arrogant and presumptuous prick.
Yes - great succinct summation. What a bunch of BS....
This appears to be a new and unfamiliar use of the word "honored."
So now the GOP is for colonialism? It's amazing how far up Trumps ass the GOP is willing to stick their proverbial heads in.
"President Trump is bringing us into a golden age of America." What he really means is a new gilded age.
'Golden shower age of America'.
I think it is spelled gelded.
Are we all positive Trump won't go to war to take Iceland? The Panama Canal? Canada?
Until now Trump showed most of the characteristics of fascism but was missing territorial expansion. No longer.
What would happen if Trump ordered the army to take Greenland by force? I'm not srtain he wouldn't remain popular. What else would stop him? Putin wasn't stopped from taking the Crimea.
Well, Greenland falls under the sovereignty of Denmark, which is a NATO member. Ukraine is not a NATO member. That seems like an important distinction to me.
If Trump manages to whip up the nation with an expansionist vision NATO is so yesterday. Treaties didn't stop the fascists in WW2. Doing it anyway becomes the point.
If the US takes Greenland who would stop us? Not NATO.
Even if the North Atlantic Treaty addresses the contingency of a member of its own engaging in an attack of another NATO member (not sure it does), does anyone really think the French and British will risk Paris or London to prevent the Danish royal family from losing a North American colony?
Color me skeptical.
Europe is bigger than the US; at some point (and it need not be a clear inflection point), the Euros could easily decide that they can't and won't be joined at the hip with the US anymore.
That point could well be the US conquering a chunk of European territory.
Nor would the French or British be risking Paris or London to push back at the US conquering Greenland. Whether or not the US public has any appetite for seizing an undefended icecap in the north atlantic, Americans writ large have exactly zero warm fuzzy feelings about Nuuk; the same cannot be said for London and Paris, and Trump ordering attacks on those cities would be met with enormous domestic fury.
He already tried to break up NATO with insults the first time around. Trying to use force against a territory part of a NATO nation would complete the deed.
Never expected to be living in a country ruled by anyone rallying his supporters to support his need for lebensraum
Hopefully, all of those supporters will rush out to settle the new territory. Alabama Asshat will love Greenland winters.
Unfortunately, it won't happen. The Nazis were very frustrated that there were very few Germans that actually wanted to move to their new Lebensraum, no matter how heavily they tried to subsidize it.
What would happen if Trump ordered the army to take Greenland by force?
Hopefully DoD personnel refuse that order, as it would be illegal.
The only people stupider than Donald Trump are the people who voted for him, and they all voted for him.
If you voted for him you are inherently stupider than he is. He's a public validation of the juvenile, the infantile and the wrong.
You forgot all the totally inexperienced and completely unqualified people he wants to be in charge of all the Executive departments. I guess they are a subset of his voters though.
+1
We need to call this for what it is: insanity.
This is all so painfully stupid. I honestly don't even understand the point.
1. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico accomplishes nothing. Even the new name is kind of a self own since "America" technically includes Canada and Mexico (and more). So, it's less accurate and doesn't clearly associate it with our country like I'm sure the Trump intended. This is the *United States of* America - not just "America". So, maybe the Gulf of the United States? That really rolls off the tongue.
2. Short of an invasion and hostile takeover, there is no path to adding Greenland or Canada. None. And, again, it accomplishes literally nothing. Even worse, if by some strange confluence of events it would happen, and the citizens of those new states were able to vote, Republican rule would be over for generations. So, at best another self own.
3. The Panama canal exists and we are already able to use it. I'm not sure it's even terribly profitable. It might be enough to sustain a tiny country like Panama, but any positive revenue would likely be a rounding error when thrown into our federal budget. There's no national security implication one way or the other, because (checks notes) the US military still exists. If Panama suddenly decided that we can't use the canal anymore, a very tiny bit of sabre rattling would take care of that instantly. There's just no obvious upside to this. I'll concede that it's the best of this crop of ideas, but still incredibly bad. This is more like a standard, run of the mill bad idea that a normal person might come up with on a bad day. The others are batshit, laugh out loud crazy, and could only come from a true imbecile.
The sad thing is that it's all incredibly predictable. Donald Trump sort of knows two things: 1. branding, and 2. real estate. His knowledge and skill in both areas is child like, but you can see him trying to apply them here. I don't know what he thinks is supposed to happen if Greenland and Canada become US territories, but he just thinks having more real estate = winning. Literally nothing happens if the Gulf of Mexico has a different name. I guess the Panama canal could possibly create a tiny amount of federal revenue, but at what cost to our alliances and national security? Like I said, it's a terrible idea, but at least somewhere in the realm of normal terrible. I'm sure Trump imagines the tolls flowing directly into his pocket, but as usual hasn't even thought about operating costs or all the negative externalities. Again in perfect keeping with what we know about him - costs can be financed and subsequent debt abandoned, and externalities are not his problem ever. Such a predictably incompetent buffoon, but half the country thought he should be in charge again. God help us all.
I've got it. All maps in the US including online ones will call it the Gulf of the United States, the canal can be The Canal the US Built not France, Canada will be labeled Frozen North US Just Like Alaska, and Greenland can be Greenbackland.
Donald will be estatic.
The other thing he knows is reality TV. Creating drama, casting bad guys, generating conflict.
Oh, crap! Of course! That's actually the one thing he's legitimately good at. I guess I was only thinking of the things that he imagines he's good at.
"It might be enough to sustain a tiny country like Panama, but any positive revenue would likely be a rounding error when thrown into our federal budget."
Very, very true. And: whatever revenue the US government would get from operating the canal is worth a tiny, tiny fraction of goddamn horrific damage to the US's good name and credit that would flow from stealing a piece of global infrastructure justified with by nothing more than (a) we wants it, and (b) you can't stop us.
Why would anybody ever negotiate with the US again? Why wouldn't they price into all future deals the risk that the US would just go back on its word?
For a supposed dealmaker, Trump knows fuckall about how extremely valuable a reputation for fair dealing is. I mean, for chrissakes, has he never wondered why only D-list shady banks and russian gangsters would finance him?
net profit of $3.5B
https://www.dw.com/en/panama-canal-why-is-trump-interested-in-it/a-71248886
and 12% of their GDP
https://midamericafreight.org/index.php/2023/11/29/the-costs-at-the-canal/
"For a supposed dealmaker, Trump knows fuckall about how extremely valuable a reputation for fair dealing is." That's because he's never had one. Just ask anyone he's ever done business with.
+1.
Can he rename New Mexico????
Will Canada restart its bomb program??
Will Canada build a wall and make the US pay for it?
What will we do with Canada's army, navy Air Force and coast guard?
This is all so painfully stupid. I honestly don't even understand the point....1. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico accomplishes nothing.
Sure it accomplishes something: it keeps the conversation on Trump. You and I and most of us are falling for it.
One thing the Panama Canal buys you is the ability to deny access to other countries.
Not that I think Trump is that strategically minded - he is just complaining about the rates ships have to pay to transit the canal.
Just imagine if a Democrat had thrown out the possibility of acquiring Greenland or anything so laughable. Certainly if it could be pinned on Biden, all we'd be hearing about is how old and doddering it shows hm. The right would be trumpeting it 24/7 while mainstream media speculated on whether it's due to age.
I mean
Harry Truman did float the idea back in 47.
Its a cult
Why anyone in their right mind would send their kid to an Ivy League school is beyond me.
Well, anyone that does so strictly for the superior education is probably going to be disappointed. But, if you do it for the proximity to wealth and power and all the wonderful networking opportunities, that's a different story. It's basically just college plus country club level access to rich kids parents and powerful alumni. Probably a good bargain if you understand what you're buying.
That's what I've always heard as well. It aint the education, it's the connections to future power players and their parents.
+1
My daughter's X father in law roomed with the son of mega wealthy Indian family. He never took advantage of the connection. It did get him an invitation to a wedding that had 20,000 attendees and my daughter and her x got invited to a smaller version.
How can a guy who graduated cum laude from an (I guess) Ivy with a Bachelors in history and economics think "Manifest Destiny, just like 1850 - that's the ticket".
I went to some not very good public schools in Arizona and then a non-Ivy and wasn't cum anything (skipping a joke there) and only got the Econ and not much of the History part. And I always knew this isn't 1850 and those kinds of ideas belong in what is now two turns of the century ago.
Far more baffling than the same kind of thing from barely high school graduate voters. But I guess a ton of words have been applied to all this without any kind of good explanations other than the ignorance and gullibility of a lot of humans. Again, not much of an excuse for a guy like him, but there it is.
MAGA Republicans will soon have convinced themselves that acquiring Greenland and the Panama Canal, together with forging a union with Canada, were key campaign promises. They have been transformed from Trump thought bubbles into serious political objectives by two developments: (1) so many MAGA Republicans in Congress and the media immediately supported the proposals that Trump will look foolish if he walks them back, and (2) instead of ignoring them, lots of idiots in the EU and Canada have responded angrily that they reject the ideas. The latter means a failure to follow through would be seen as Trump backing down to a bunch of third-rate foreign politicians, which would be intolerable.
So expect these issues to be central to the next administration, simply because the extent of public commentary has made it impossible for them not to be. Trump may even welcome the development, as it will distract attention from his failure to honor most of the campaign promises he actually did make.
Nah, the thing about cults is that when the leader moves on, the cult moves on as well, to the next shiny object. Sorta like how if Putin decided to end the war in Ukraine tomorrow, lunatics like Dugin would kick and scream but all the other apparatchiks would immediately move to the new talking point about what a beneficent leader Putin is.
What I really came to post was that Brandon Gill is about as venal and intellectually corrupt as they come.
I don't see any reason why Trump would move on. These are issues that let him do what he loves: insult, demean and make unreasonable demands of people who cannot respond in kind because they depend too much on American goodwill. Making the King of Denmark a punching bag along with the government of Panama will be a much lower-risk pasttime than his attempt to do the same to Kim Jong-Un and Ukraine last time around.
It's not at all hard to imagine circumstances where Greenland and Panama end up endorsing some kind of new treaty with America which Trump will proclaim as COMPLETE VINDICATION, despite the agreements doing little to change the status quo. It would be a re-run of what he did with the renewal of NAFTA.
We laugh but we could be seeing the end of Pax Americana and the rise of Imperium Americana in its place. There are already reports of a draft executive order to set up a review board of 3 and 4 star generals in order to remove them if they are “lacking in requisite leadership qualities”. Oust a few, the rest fall in line, and an invasion proceeds. Grievances addressed. Manifest destiny redux. More 'room for living' for the American people.
So an American version of Lebensraum.
Junior visiting Greenland with Kirk to foment discontent from locals who want union with the US was a classic Hitlerian strategic move. Look for their movement to become a formal activist group in Greenland agitating for a break with Denmark and the EU, with vocal support by the US government. By 2028, Democrats who oppose acquisition of Greenland will be widely regarded as un-American.
Were there actual Greenlanders in that photo-op, or were they a claque flown in for the occasion?
This is where Musk's practice with the Neo-Nazis in Germany would come in handy. He would find two guys in a Nuuk pub and inflate their drunken ramblings into a call for action:
"Only Sisimiut can save Greenland"
The review of generals is not about external affairs. It is intended to remove generals that may prefer the constitution over Trump commands, specially when internal violence (like using army units to suppress demonstrations) is involved.
People are noticing. Paul Krugman observes that long term interest rates have gone up despite the Fed easing short term rates - a rare phenomenon. "Is there an insanity premium on interest rates?" he wonders.
OMG the projection in a statement like this is amazing:
"Where do conservatives come up with such a steady stream of these people? They're willing to pretend support for anything with no apparent embarrassment. It's remarkable."
I do actually agree completely. This statement is true of Conservatives. That's a main reason why I do not consider myself a Conservative.
But there's a big but: the exact same statement also applies to Leftists. That's why I do not consider myself on the Left. I am more or less among the politically homeless these days.
Both sides have surrendered (in their own different ways) to extremists. That is the problem of our times: not Conservatives who "pretend support for anything with no apparent embarrassment" but extremists on both the Right and the Left who will "pretend support for anything" and then demand that the rest of us play along and accept their fantasy worlds.
What is it that the Left pretends to support no matter how ridiculous it may be? You should not need me to tell you, and, if you do, then you need to get out of whatever cocoon you're in. But a small sampling would include the hyperbolic claims of the 1619 project, the idea that free speech is bad if it hurts any feelings (more specifically the feelings of someone in a demographic minority), the quasi-religious insistence that biological sex is not real (Carole Hooven was hounded out of Harvard for appropriately using her free speech to assert otherwise), and, perhaps the ultimate of all Leftist absurdities, the idea that our free society is supposed to mandate proportional racial outcomes (or equity) in all endeavors.
That's just a partial list of utterly illiberal lunacies. And the problem when all of us fail to speak out against these absurdities is that they then proceed not just to represent the Left but to thoroughly discredit it. And then we can't even win an election against an obvious clown like Trump. Nor are we any longer in any position to complain about Conservatives. The Left has spent too many years if not decades barricading itself inside a seemingly impregnable glass house. And, as a result, neither Kevin nor any other Liberal/Leftist is in any position to throw stones.
Perhaps the ultimate of all trollish absurdities is the idea that carefully cherry-picked sentiments expressed by some private individuals in academia or the media are every bit as valid a representation of "The Left's" collective beliefs, attitudes and values as the positions the leader of the MAGA Republican Party and its elected representatives propound as official policy again and again.
@kenalovell:
You express exactly the kind of denialism that Liberals must renounce if we are ever to rehabilitate our reputation. If the first step to solving a problem is recognizing and accepting it, then we need to recognize and accept it.
+1
"Nor are we any longer in any position to complain about Conservatives."
Good point! If only this Carole Hooven person was still teaching (?) at Harvard instead of being "hounded," then I would be able to criticize Trump's proposal to seize Greenland. But she isn't,* so I guess we're all stuck.
_____
* I guess? I've never heard of this person. But then again, I guess I'm just an ignoramous who wasn't aware that some specific personnel decision of one university was a National Issue Of Great Import that cost me, as a Democratic voter, my standing to complain about anything conservatives do.
@aldoushickman
You can flout ignorance as if it's a virtue if you want, but there are plenty of other voters who are, in fact, perfectly well aware of the problems that I describe. And they vote accordingly. And then we wind up with Trump.
Because Carole Hooven is of course jus one symptom of a more widespread disease. Here is well-known Liberal Greg Lukianoff referencing the Hooven case and other recent woke cancellations:
"Carole Hooven was forced out of Harvard for having the opinion that biological sex is real. Also at Harvard, Roland Fryer was targeted for publishing a study that found no racial differences in the frequency of officer-involved shootings. At Stanford, Jay Bhattacharrya was targeted for questioning mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the University of Pittsburgh, Associate Professor of Cardiology Norman Wang’s teaching privileges were revoked because he published a research paper examining the potential harms of affirmative action policies. The list goes on."
So if you want to bury your head in the sand, no one can really stop you. But, as best I can tell, you seem to find such behavior humorous if not virtuous. And on that point we disagree. I find that kind of willful blindness to be shameful if not outright dangerous.
You are absolutely right, Leo! A single private hiring decision by a private institution is a far, far more pressing issue than whether or not my government acting in my name attempts to conquer territory from a weaker ally. The scales have fallen from my eyes!
Sorry, Nuuk--but I cannot choose my battles (Leo has chosen them for me!). Quickly, Leo, to the ramparts! Let us shout our rallying call! Hooven! Hoooooooooo-ven!