Multiple critics called out CNN this week for purportedly normalizing President-elect Donald Trump's idea of "buying" Greenland, invading Panama and possibly even Canada.
Trump spent this past weekend ranting about the high costs of ships passing through the Panama Canal and declared that it's such a ripoff that the United States should take back the canal. While it would violate a 1977 treaty and involve an invasion of U.S. soldiers, Trump didn't stop there.
According to New York Times reporters, Trump has long been obsessed with buying Greenland, thinking that the Denmark-owned island is like the large shop "on the corner." While Trump's team is aiming for $2 trillion in cuts to the federal government, he wants to spring huge cash on either buying Greenland or annexing it the way Russia did with Crimea.
It comes only a few weeks after Trump told Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada should simply become a new "state" of the U.S.
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In reporting on these remarks, CNN was accused of "sanitizing" the story and "sane washing" it by reporting it as follows: "The president-elect has suggested a territorial extension into Panama, Greenland, and Canada. If he's serious, it would rival the Louisiana Purchase."
Election lawyer Marc Elias took to Blue Sky on Tuesday to shame the network and call it "hopelessly broken."
"1. This 'expansion' would require military invasions of several allies in violation of international law. 2. It would violate several treaties. 3. The Louisiana Purchase was the sale of land by a colonial power (France). These are sovereign nations," he said.
"So Trump wants to annex Greenland, Canada, and Panama, and invade Mexico. A whole lot of gullible people were telling me he was the antiwar, anti-imperial candidate," remarked digital strategist Robert Cruickshank on X.
Melanie D’Arrigo of the Campaign for New York Health called out CNN for "manufacturing consent for Trump to attack and invade our allies."
Film and television editor Michael Tae Sweeney said on Blue Sky that CNN is guilty of doing this over several years. It's all an effort to "try to help Trump and fool their audience by lying to them."
USA Today opinion columnist Michael J. Stern told CNN, "When one country tries to take over parts of another country it's not 'expansion,' it's an illegal act of war." He linked it to another CNN story with the headline, "TRump is teasing US expansion into Panama, Greenland and Canada."
