Dear King Donald -- Buy Portugal instead
Forget the tariff trickery, your majesty, and use your imperial powers to buy a beautiful, cheap and historic little country on the nose of Europe where the people don't hate us yet.
My wife Trudi and I recently walked and drove around Portugal for 14 days, racking up 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) by rental car, paying too much for gas and eating too many custard tarts. Based on what we saw, we decided that President Trump should forget about buying or conquering cold, melting Greenland and grab sunny, cheap Portugal instead. This petition to King Donald is a reworking of a previous ‘Grab Portugal’ article that no one gave a shit about either.
King Donald, buy Portugal instead
Dear King Donald the First.
Forget Greenland.
Don’t bother with Canada or Gaza, either.
If you are really our self-crowned king, as your many critics say, and if you are really serious about getting the USA back in the colonization business, you need to buy Portugal.
All of it. And quick, before your fellow imperialist-in-chief Czar Putin gets any ideas.
There’d probably be a few minor geopolitical and military issues to iron out. Congress, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Department boss Pete Hegseth can handle those. And I guess Portugal’s 10 million happy Nato members should be consulted.
But a hostile takeover of Portugal by the USA isn’t really such a stretch. It’d be a quick and bloodless way for you to jump-start your quest to Make America Bigger Again.
Everyone who goes to Portugal falls in love with it, as I did recently.
As your advisers can tell you, it’s much smaller and warmer than Greenland -- and it’s not melting.
The whole country is only the size of Indiana, but it is packed with thousands of years of Western history and culture and too many priceless natural and man-made blessings to count or visit.
It’s why 20 million tourists go there every year. As they quickly find out, Portugal’s magnificent beaches, rugged Atlantic coastlines and monster ocean waves are quiet superstars of the global travel world.
The country also has more cool old castles and Moorish forts than Disney, a hundred stone churches older than North America and almost as many top golf courses as you have, your majesty.
It’s by no means poverty stricken, but Portugal’s economy can’t compare to Italy or even Spain next door.
Its per capita GDP of nearly $30,000 ranks about 17th or 18th among 27 EU countries. In addition to major industries like exporting cars and tourism, its economy is gently powered by Old World staples like textiles, olive oil and cork.
Portugal’s got lots more going for it besides mild weather, oceans of Port wine and really old stuff made out of stone, however. And everything – almost -- is on sale if you’re spending the mighty U.S. dollar, especially in the off-season.
Luxurious Airbnbs in centro Porto go for 70 euros a night (about $70 US), Uber rides are a third the price of Pittsburgh’s. A full-course meal of grilled fresh fish for two barely breaches 30 euros in little neighborhood family restaurants in Lisbon and Porto.
Portugal’s a good buy but far from perfect. Like most European Union countries, it’s a mix of too much green nanny government and too little free market capitalism. In other words, it’s like California.
Its under-subsidized trains run on time but are nothing like the sleek ground rockets flying around countries like France and Germany. But the country is laced together nicely by superior major highways and country backroads as smooth and twisted as West Virginia’s.
Best of all, there are thousands of round-abouts in Portugal that make intersections safe, efficient and redlight-free. Stop signs and traffic signals are more rare than billboards and billboards are harder to find than spray painted hammer and sickles and “F- Capitalism’”graffito.
It’d be a terrible waste of our taxpayers’ money to pay for the demolition and recycling of hundreds of those expensive wind turbines twirling feebly on top of Portugal’s mountain ridges. But swallowing the entire country in one gulp makes darn good sense.
It would instantly give the USA some Old World class. It gets our national hands on two great metropolises – Lisbon, pop. 2.5 million, and Porto, pop. 500,000 – that are totally unlike any North American city.
A pair of dense, UNESCO-certified tourist traps, both are shockingly beautiful. Both are also shockingly historic, shockingly diverse and shockingly crowded. They’re almost as safe from serious crime as the Vatican.
Though the graffiti is heavy and inescapable, and Lisbon has a noticable litter problem, Portugal does not look or feel at all like a poor or backward country.
Its friendly people are as in touch with the 21st Century as, well, my fellow West Virginians. If they hate you or America, your majesty, they never showed it while we were there. (I did not take a MAGA with me, but everyone we met knew we were Americans.)
Grabbing Portugal would be a far less bloody and geopolitically incorrect way to make America larger again than how your new hero William McKinley did it 127 years ago. McKinley had to win the Spanish-American war to snag Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico.
You obviously don’t want to use force or declare war on poor little Portugal, which has cleaned up its act since the days when it pioneered the Transatlantic slave trade 500 years ago and was the nasty owner of a dozen colonies like Brazil and Angola.
But you could sell buying Portugal as “reverse colonialism.” We’d actually take over a European country by purchasing it outright instead of using our CIA to topple a government we don’t like or posting our soldiers and nukes there permanently.
In any case, annexing Portugal makes a lot of sense. It’s the closest European country to Washington in distance and maybe even culture. About 1.5 million Americans claim Portuguese ancestry. About 15,000 American expats now live like dukes in Portugal.
If you decide to take this free advice and buy Portugal, your majesty, you should quickly write two executive orders.
I promise you they would immediately make you a bigger national hero than Renaldo, boost the Portuguese economy and raise the standard of living for several million “Ports,” as I assume you’ll soon be calling them.
One EO would mandate cash tips of 10 to 20 percent for all service workers – untaxed, of course. The second would slash the EU’s standard criminally high taxes on gasoline and bring the price for a gallon down from $7 to $3.
Whatever you would decide, your majesty, it's obvious to any objective journalist at CNN or MSNBC that buying Portugal would be a win-win deal for us and the Ports.
It’s the closest European country to Washington in distance. About 1.5 million Americans claim Portuguese ancestry. About 15,000 American expats now live there like retired dukes.
The Portuguese language is tough, but English is widely spoken. Portugal is an America-tolerant land that would make a fine purple 51st state if Canadians and Greenlanders don’t play along with your dream of creating a Max Americana.
And did I mention that Portugal has only one border – a long, wide-open one with Spain that costs zero euros a year to maintain? Or that the Ports happen to be sitting on one of the largest lithium deposits in Europe?
In any case, don’t worry, your majesty. Portugal would be a much better prize for your kingdom than Alaska was. The EU would hardly miss it. And Nato? Don’t make Putin laugh. Lisbon is 48 hours away from Moscow by tank.
