President says he is sending a hospital boat to Greenland; Greenland says no thank you.

Hon. Saturday night. The President of the United States, on his social media platform, posted that he is sending a great hospital boat to Greenland. The post included a picture. The picture, hon, was AI-generated. The picture showed the USNS Mercy.

The USNS Mercy, in real life, on Saturday night, on the Saturday night this post went up, was dry-docked in Mobile, Alabama. So was the USNS Comfort, the only other Navy hospital ship the United States has. Both ships. In Alabama. In a shipyard. On publicly available shipping data. You can look it up. Anybody can look it up.

The President said the ship would take care of the many people who are sick in Greenland and not being taken care of there. This is the premise of the post. The premise is that the people of Greenland are not being taken care of.

Now. Hon. Pay attention. Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, operates under the Danish national healthcare system, which is, on every published metric, free at the point of service for every citizen. The Greenlandic Prime Minister, a gentleman named Jens-Frederik Nielsen, responded the next morning, publicly, on the record, with the following sentence: we have a public healthcare system where treatment is free for citizens. It is a deliberate choice and a fundamental part of our society.

Hon. The Prime Minister of Greenland, who exists, and who has a job, spent his Sunday morning explaining to the President of the United States, who also exists and who also has a job, that the citizens of his country already get free healthcare.

So. To recap. The post claimed a thing about Greenlandic healthcare that was the opposite of true. The post offered to send a ship that was not in the water. The post used a picture that was AI-generated. The Prime Minister of Greenland corrected the thing. The USNS Mercy did not go anywhere. The next day, the President referred to the situation again, on a Tuesday, and the ship was still in Alabama.

This is the kind of thing where, in 2009, the next morning’s Today Show would have opened with it. Matt Lauer would have raised an eyebrow. The Prime Minister of Greenland would have been interviewed live. There would have been a graphic of the dry-docked ship.

Now? The Saturday night post is a Sunday morning hangover. The cable hour gives it forty seconds. Monday it is over.

You ever notice how the Greenland we keep being told is desperate keeps politely declining the gift baskets?

Funny how that works.