The Brew: Acting President Donald Trump Announces New Investment Deal and Plan to Change Name of Gulf of Mexico
"Sure. Put Greenland on my tab."
Happy Wednesday!
Yesterday’s Brew covered the world premiere of The Eastman Dilemma at Mar-a-Lago and the fascinating panel discussion on lawfare that preceded the screening. I could hear many of you thinking, “Yeah, yeah. Fine, fine. But what’s it really like at Mar-a-Lago?!” Believe me, I’m going to dish, but with all that’s going on, we’re going to save that for later in the week.
Acting President Trump Cutting Deals, Set to Rename Gulf of Mexico
While technically Donald Trump is not being sworn in again until noon on January 20, it certainly seems he’s already on the job. In fact, with Joe Biden acting more like Casper the Friendly Ghost than Commander-in-Chief, and Kamala Harris barely capable of making it through the Pledge of Allegiance, we might as well call Trump “Acting President Trump.”
Tuesday, the acting president announced that the Saudi industrialist, DAMAC Properties owner Hussain Sajwani, will be investing $20 billion to build data centers across several states in the Midwest. A stern Trump declared “all hell will break out” if Hamas does not release all the hostages still being held in Gaza by the time he takes office. His Middle East negotiator stood next to him and hinted such freedom might be at hand.
Trump refused to rule out using the military to retake the Panama Canal if Panama starts showing us some love. And you know the Gulf of Mexico? We’re gonna need new maps. Trump said he’ll soon be changing the name to the “Gulf of America.”
“‘Gulf of America,'” he said. “What a beautiful name!”
And then there’s Greenland …
Trump So Serious About Wanting Greenland, He’s Sent Don Jr.
Trump is so serious about wanting Greenland that he sent Don Jr. over to check it out.
“Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!
After dealing with yesterday’s big snowstorm in the D.C. area, one has to ask why anyone would want to own a wintery wasteland. The answer is pretty much the same reason we purchased Alaska from Russia: It will gain us greater national security, natural resources, and it’s a great place to film hearty reality shows.
Besides, technically, Greenland is part of the North American continent already, even if culturally it’s been considered European for about a millennium.
While the idea of America purchasing Greenland from Denmark this year seems far-fetched, as many have pointed out, we bought what is now the U.S. Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917 for $25 million. According to the Department of the Interior, we scooped up the Danish portion of the islands “mainly for strategic reasons to assure tranquility in the Caribbean Ocean.”
Denmark keeps insisting that Greenland is not for sale. But would Trump be sending a team and making all this noise if he believed that? Or if he didn’t know Denmark wants something more than it wants 830 million square miles of mostly ice with less than 60,000 people? (A good bet is that Denmark wants energy. Until 2020, Denmark was a net exporter of energy, thanks to its North Sea oil and gas reserves. But the country is no longer self-sufficient in oil, and saw a major jump in electricity imports in 2023. Don’t put it past Trump to say, “We’ll provide all the energy you need and will cut you a deal on the price … and we’ll take that island of ice off your hands.” Not saying that’s going to happen, but certainly it’s a possible scenario.)
Trump’s definitely going to make a deal. We’ve never seen him this excited about purchasing something that didn’t have the Golden Arches stamped on it.
If you don’t think Trump’s going to end up with Greenland in the end, you might want to read The Art of the Deal.
Victory: McDonalds Is Ditching DEI
With a former (if brief) employee and top customer named Donald Trump about to take the White House, McDonald’s is now dumping a slew of its DEI-connected policies.
Robby Starbuck announced the policy changes, noting they came just days after he announced he’d be posting a story exposing those policies. Similar stories by Starbuck and the public backlash that followed have led companies including Harley-Davidson and Lowe’s to end woke policies.
According to Starbuck, the fast food giant:
- “Will END their diversity ‘goals’ for how many of each race they hire.” In other words, no more racial “quotas” that end up discriminating against white applicants.
- Will no longer participate in the [Human Rights Campaign’s] woke Corporate Equality Index scoring system that forces the trans agenda into the workplace in exchange for a perfect score.
- Is ENDING the DEI pledge for their supply chain. That means no diversity quotas or “goals” will exist for how they choose or prioritize suppliers. Focus will now be on merit.
- The Hamburglar will no longer be called a “Ham-Justice-Involved Individual.”
(Yes, we made the last one up.)
Little Victory for Free Speech: Meta/Facebook Dropping “Fact-Checking” Censors in Favor of X-Style “Community Notes”
In another sign of improving times, Facebook is ditching its liberal/censorship-minded third-party “fact-checkers” who worked overtime to shut down free speech and content that challenged the liberal and regime party line in 2020. (Most notably information surrounding COVID that turned out to be accurate.)
In an online video, Meta Founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared: “We’re gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”
Zuckerberg, who spent roughly $400 million in 2020 to help Democrats rig the election, also promised in the video to “work with” the incoming Trump administration. “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said.
Do you trust Zuckerberg? Will Facebook actually follow through?
Can we use Community Note recipes posted by friends?
We’ll see.
And not for nothing, but does Zuckerberg seem more human in this video than he has in recent years?
Along The Stream…
We bring you a one-two punch on the New Orleans terrorist attack. Timothy Furnish asks, “Must Our Leaders Always Lie About Islamic Terrorism?”
And Raymond Ibrahim tells us “Why It’s Not So ‘Senseless’ After All.”
Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.