If I wasn’t already drinking in the morning to cope with the news, this would be the moment when I start.

Some look at Greenland and say, “Why?”

Donald Trump looks at Greenland and says, “Why not?”

The idea of the U.S. purchasing Greenland has captured the former real-estate developer’s imagination, according to people familiar with the deliberations, who said Mr. Trump has, with varying degrees of seriousness, repeatedly expressed interest in buying the ice-covered autonomous Danish territory between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

In meetings, at dinners and in passing conversations, Mr. Trump has asked advisers whether the U.S. can acquire Greenland, listened with interest when they discuss its abundant resources and geopolitical importance and, according to two of the people, has asked his White House counsel to look into the idea…

The person described the question less as a serious inquiry than as a joke meant to indicate “I’m so powerful I could buy a country,” noting that since Mr. Trump hadn’t floated the idea at a campaign rally yet, he probably wasn’t seriously considering it. The person believed the president was interested in the idea because of the island’s natural resources and because it would give him a legacy akin to former President Dwight Eisenhower ’s admission of Alaska into the U.S. as a state.

The Greenland Trump Tower Hotel and Casino will be the greatest Viking-themed casino in the world, many people are saying.

We don’t need to buy the island to have military access to it. We’ve already got that covered with Thule Air Base. We don’t need to buy it for economic access either. Greenland is open for business. The reason to want total dominion over Greenland is to gain the power to exclude: China is verrrry interested in the island as an Atlantic base that would put it on America’s (and Europe’s) doorstep. Denmark stepped in and blocked a Chinese attempt to buy an abandoned naval base there two years ago but Chinese mining interests in the country are expanding. If you want to keep the Chinese out, you’re stuck either relying on the unwavering loyalty of the governments of Denmark and Greenland as Beijing throws more money around — or, of course, acquiring the land yourself and telling the Chinese to beat it.

Besides, we have a moral duty to liberate this communist hellhole:

“You can never own land here,” Mr. Mortensen said, as all land is owned by the government. “In Greenland, you get a right to use the land where you want to build a house, but you can’t buy.”

That’s gonna change, son. Anyway — I’m all for buying! A country like ours that’s in freefall decline might as well soothe itself with a little great-power nostalgia by purchasing a territory. We can’t be failing as a nation if we’re expanding our land mass, right? Plus, Trump will have an awesome new applause line for his rallies in the same vein as “Space Force”: “WE BOUGHT GREENLAND,” he’ll bellow, with MAGA-ites cheering wildly. The wrinkle is that, ah, Greenland might be underwater before too long due to climate change, which would make this yet another in a long line of bad Trump real-estate deals. But look on the bright side — temperatures in the small pockets of dry land that remain will probably be quite pleasant and mild relative to the rest of the planet, and Trump could always convert that part of the ocean to a protected zone for the ultimate right-wing dream, libertarian seasteading.

Anyway, I’m excited for a big spate of Fox News programming next week about how awesome Greenland is and how it took a visionary genius as president to finally acknowledge it.