Forget Greenland, President Trump. It's melting. Colonize Portugal instead

Donald Trump, our imperialist in chief, is talking about annexing or taking over Greenland. The Vance family checked it out. Based on my recent spin through sunny Portugal, we ought to buy it instead.

Has Donald Trump said anything lately about Portugal?

My wife Trudi and I have been overseas and a little out of touch.

We just got back home to West Virginia from a two-week dash by foot and rented car around that spectacular but consistently un-newsworthy small country on the nose of Western Europe.

Based on what we saw, the people we met and the fun we had driving around like teenagers for 2,700 kilometers, I’m petitioning our newly self-crowned king to make a serious offer for the entire country of Portugal.

And quickly, before Vladimir Putin gets any ideas.

There’d probably be a few minor geopolitical, military and Constitutional issues for Congress and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to iron out.

Portugal’s 10 million happy Nato members – “The Ports” as Trump will probably call them – should also probably be consulted.

Purchasing Portugal isn’t really such a stretch in the Golden Age of Trump. It’d be a quick and easy way for our imperialist-in-chief to jump start his quest to Make America Bigger Again.

But before King Donald or his unelected court jester Elon whip out their checkbooks – or reach for America’s limitless credit card – I want them to read this totally unbiased drive-by appraisal of the real estate under consideration.

Everyone you know who goes to Portugal falls in love with it and its people. We just did.

Much warmer and not melting like Greenland, more digestible and less boring than Canada, Portugal is famous for its infinite supplies of Port wine, sardines, pastries and cobblestones.

The whole country is only the size of Indiana. But it’s jam-packed with thousands of years of Western history and culture and too many priceless natural and man-made blessings to count or visit.

As at least 20 million tourists a year 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 Trump Inc.

Everything – almost -- is on sale in Portugal if you’re spending U.S. dollars, especially in off-season.

Luxurious Airbnbs in centro Porto went for $70 a night, Uber rides were a third the price of Pittsburgh, a glass of wine or an espresso was $1.50….

We ate and drank modestly, not like bureaucrats on a federal credit card. Our full-course meals for two barely breached $30 in several crowded little neighborhood family restaurants in Lisbon and Porto.

Another bonus: The deadly pandemic of wokeness that just ended in America apparently never made it across the Atlantic and in Catholic Portugal “DEI” is still the genitive singular of the Latin word for God.

But King Donald should be warned. Portugal is far from perfect.

It is not a rich country. It’s not poverty stricken, but its economy can’t compare to mighty Germany or even Spain next door.

Its per capita GDP of nearly $30,000 ranks 17^st among 27 EU countries. In addition to major industries like car-making and tourism, its economy is gently powered by Old World staples like textiles, wine, olive oil and cork.

Portugal’s under-subsidized government passenger trains are no match for the modern, high-speed ground-rockets flying around Italy or France at 200 kph. But the country is laced together with superior major highways and country backroads as smooth and twisted as West Virginia’s.

Best of all, there are thousands of smartly designed roundabouts that make intersections safe, efficient and red light-free. Stop signs and traffic signals are more rare than billboards and billboards are harder to find than ‘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 America some Old World class with hardly any of the green-socialist Euro-politics that MAGA America hates. It also gets our 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 UNESCO-certified tourist traps, both are shockingly beautiful. Both are also shockingly old, shockingly historic and shockingly crowded.

Unlike America’s sterile, over-planned and redevelopment-wrecked cities, Lisbon and Porto are organic, vibrant, loosely regulated and chaotic marketplaces of human activity. Both cities are worth a visit by any traveler – but on foot.

Zoning was invented 2000 years too late for Portugal. So was the car. So was parking – on and off street. Lisbon’s and Porto’s ancient downtowns and tight, old hilly city neighborhoods are multi-modal nightmares.

Their narrow streets are almost as safe from serious crime as the Vatican’s. But they’re terrorized day and night by cowboy motorcyclists, clogged with too many pedestrians and eternally un-adaptable to the Auto Age.

The streets, sidewalks, rain gutters and plazas in the original parts of Lisbon, Porto and in the center of smaller old hilltop cities across Portugal like Evora are famously paved with small, grey or black cobblestones that Roman road crews first perfected in the B.C.’s sometime.

Lisbon has a noticeable litter problem – despite its government being obsessed with recycling. It and Porto have too many visitors, even in off-season.

The graffiti is inescapable, often high-grade and apparently considered permanent. And the random spray-painted red hammer-and-sickles seem more like jokes than leftist threats.

Six hundred years ago Portugal was a great seafaring nation where Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama and Magellan launched the Age of Discovery. Unfortunately, the Portuguese peaked early in the Modern Age.

They haven’t been global players since they invented the Transatlantic slave trade in the 1500s. Then they coasted, becoming a third-rate colonial power for the next 500 years with their major holdings being jungly Brazil, Angola and Mozambique.

Despite its Second World status today, Portugal does not look or feel at all like a poor or backward country. Its friendly people are just as in touch with the 21^st Century as, well, my fellow West Virginians. If they hate Trump or America or capitalism, they never showed it while we were there.

The only serious complaints we had with the Portuguese people were cultural and religious ones.

We quickly learned that every man, woman and teenage driver in the land is a stupidly aggressive tailgater and speeder who apparently flunked out of the same Mario Andretti Driving School.

And based on a couple of neighborhood sports bars we stumbled on, everyone in the country worships a strange, low-scoring sport they insist on calling “football.”

If King Donald I buys Portugal for America, instead of imposing a 25% tariff on Portuguese pastries or Port wine, or something just as economically dumb, he could easily do two things that would boost the Portuguese economy and raise the standard of living for several million Ports overnight.

All he’d have to do is write one executive order mandating cash tips of 10 to 20 percent for all service workers – untaxed, of course. And write a second EO slashing the crushing federal taxes on gasoline from the California-plus price of $7 a gallon to $3.

If King Donald promised to do both, Portugal would boom. A super majority of its people would petition him to buy their homeland and he’d become a bigger national hero than Cristiano Renaldo.

Before he floats the idea of purchasing Portugal at his next press conference, or mentions it to Congress, however, King Donald might want to take a closer look at its border policy with Spain, it’s only neighbor.

As my wife and I saw in northwest Portugal when we zoomed past the graffiti-covered ruins of several abandoned government checkpoint buildings, there is no national border.

Portugal’s frontier with Spain has been wide open and unguarded by fence or soldier since 1995. If King Donald snaps up Portugal for the USA, as I hope he will, he’ll be happy to know he won’t have to spend a single euro on a border wall.

After my drive-by scouting trip of little Portugal, it’s obvious to me as an objective ex-journalist that buying it would be a win-win deal for us and the Ports.

It would be a far less bloody and geopolitically incorrect way to make America larger again than how King Donald’s new hero William McKinley expanded it 127 years ago. McKinley had to win the Spanish-American war to snag Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico.

We obviously don’t want to use force or go to war.

Think of buying Portugal as “reverse colonialism” – we 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.

Portugal is much more than just a great vacation adventure or affordable retirement spot. It’s a friendly, America-tolerant, democracy-minded land that is sorry for its colonial sins. It would make a great 51^st state if Canada or Greenland don’t want to play along with our self-crowned king’s dream of creating a Max Americana.

English is widely spoken in Portugal, and, unfortunately, it’s already fully colonized by America’s embarrassing pop culture. Airbnbs are cheap and plentiful. The food, wine and beach fun are always on sale for visitors packing strong U.S. dollars.

So, trust me, King Donald, Portugal’s a great deal — a steal at any price. The EU won’t miss it. Nato doesn’t need it. It happens to be sitting on one of the largest lithium deposits in Europe. And Lisbon is 48 hours from Moscow by tank.