WSJ: "Trump's Bully Pulpit Diplomacy"

[1] This editorial seems rather too positive to me.

[2] Blue media, of course, has spun all this to sound even worse than it is.

[3] When TR said he had a "bully pulpit," he meant he had a great pulpit, an excellent platform from which to air his ideas, a powerful persuasive position...as in "my pulpit--it is bully! Bully for my platform!" He didn't mean that it was a pulpit from which to bully people. It had nothing to do with bullying, i.e. threatening, intimidating or pushing people around, what we think of when we hear the word 'bully.' Unfortunately, Trump acts as if that's exactly what it means. (The media also seems to use the term in this way...but that doesn't really matter here. This one isn't their fault.)

[4] Intuitively, I'd think you'd go about something like this--thinking mostly of the Greenland suggestion--in almost the opposite way: quietly approach Denmark, reveal lukewarm interest, see whether they might be interested, blah blah blah.

[5] However, Trump knows about ten thousand times more about making deals than I do. Lifetime, I'm probably down a couple of thousand dollars on such interactions. He's ahead by billions. So...no contest there. He's an actual expert.

[6] But when you're the world's sole superpower (hyperpower?), you have to tread lightly to avoid seeming like an asshole and getting unnecessarily crossways with other nations. If you're really interested in Greenland, why give Denmark an additional reason to say no? Why turn this into a public stare-down that they can easily win by simply refusing to sell us their land? And, on top of that, setting things up so that they might feel and appear cowardly for agreeing to the deal? Again, just seems like exactly the wrong approach. Everybody knows we're the baddest dude on the block...i.e., to mess up the metaphor again, and to put way too fine a point on it: the planet. Why turn that advantage into a disadvantage by beating our chest and acting like an asshole?

[7] The reference to the use of military force is just psycho. At first he said explicitly that that was out...but then we saw a familiar pattern reemerge: the media kept badgering him and asking the question in different ways until he basically said Fuck you, yea, maybe that too.

[8] And as for Canada: trolling the loathsome Trudeau is one thing. But don't demean Canada generally. It's like picking on your little brother.