The National Republican Congressional Committee began selling the limited-edition shirts this week, turning President Donald Trump’s dashed hopes of acquiring the autonomous island into a moneymaking scheme.
A description of the T-shirt on the organization’s website encourages supporters to back Trump’s “efforts to help America grow,” despite Greenland’s repeated protestations that it isn’t up for grabs.
The Nevada GOP has its own version of a T-shirt, showing the caricatured countries high-fiving each other. “Greenland! This land is your land, this land is our land,” the front reads, employing the famous Woody Guthrie lyric.
The shirts show a continued Republican attempt to add comic flair to sales of fundraising merchandise. Trump’s reelection campaign soaked up more than $500,000 in less than two weeks last month selling overpriced plastic straws with a dig against “liberal paper straws.”
Trump, however, may not appreciate the Greenland humor.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump had spoken about buying Greenland “with varying degrees of seriousness,” asking the White House counsel to explore whether it was a possibility.
A day later, Greenland’s foreign minister, Ane Lone Bagger, told Reuters the answer is no.
“We are open for business, but we’re NOT for sale,” Bagger said.
But that didn’t stop the Trump administration from acting as if a potential deal was still on the table.
On Sunday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Fox News that the matter was “developing” and that the White House was “looking at it.” Trump then confirmed to reporters that the “large real estate deal” was “something we talked about.”
That brought a response from Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, who reiterated that the island is not for sale and called the idea “absurd.”
Trump, apparently irked over the rebuff, tweeted on Tuesday that he had canceled his upcoming trip to Denmark and griped to reporters that Frederiksen’s remark was “nasty.”
Frederiksen said Wednesday she was “disappointed and surprised” by Trump’s snub, The Associated Press reported.