You may not remember Billy Long; he was Trump’s IRS commissioner for less than two months before he was removed, at which time he announced he had been nominated to be ambassador to Iceland. At the time (last August), the Reykjavik Grapevine was clearly not thrilled: United States IRS Commissioner Fired, Then Nominated As Ambassador To Iceland was their headline.
The paper had good reason for concern. It turns out he will be as competent an ambassador as he was an IRS commissioner. As the same paper reported yesterday, Incoming U.S. Ambassador Jokes About Iceland Becoming The 52nd State:
The incoming U.S. ambassador to Iceland and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives joked yesterday that Iceland would become the 52nd state of the USA and that he would be its governor, reports Politico.
According to Politico, “We heard that former Rep. Billy Long, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Iceland, joked to members on the floor last night that Iceland will be the 52nd state and he’ll be governor.”
Politico has more: Iceland demands answers from US after Trump ally cracks 52nd state joke
Reykjavík is concerned about America’s growing territorial ambitions, after POLITICO reported that President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Iceland Billy Long joked in Washington that Iceland will be the 52nd U.S. state and he’ll be governor.
“The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has contacted the U.S. Embassy in Iceland to verify the veracity of the alleged comments,” Iceland’s foreign ministry told POLITICO in a statement.
Long has apologized, says the Missouri Independent, but doesn’t seem to be helping much:
“There is no doubt that this is very serious for a small country like Iceland. We need to understand that all the security arguments made by the U.S. regarding Greenland also apply to Iceland,” Viðreisn Sigmar Guðmundsson, a member of Iceland’s parliament, told a local newspaper.
Icelanders launched a petition urging Foreign Minister Katrín Gunnarsdóttir to reject Long as ambassador. It currently has 2,000 signatures.
Long said he was only joking. That sounds to me like Trump saying he was “only joking” when he said he wanted to be a “dictator for a day.” (Turns out the only part that was a joke was “a day”.)
Same here; I don’t think it was a joke. Or even if it was, it will get Trump thinking about it. Iceland is even more strategic than Greenland; it sits across the path that Russian ships and submarines have to take on their way to the open Atlantic. Iceland is a founding member of NATO partly for that reason. Iceland also has huge natural resources of geothermal energy, hydropower and other renewable energy sources, fish, and minerals. It is half in North America and half in Europe; the fault line between the two continental plates is a VERY visible canyon in western Iceland and is really something to see. (Though I doubt Trump would limit his greed to the North American half.)
