Given former Rep. Billy Long’s record, it was never altogether clear why the White House chose him to lead the Internal Revenue Service. The Missouri Republican was outrageously unqualified, he was plagued by serious controversies, and he was on record trying to eliminate the agency he was nominated to oversee.
Donald Trump pushed GOP senators to confirm Long anyway, and they did as they were told. His tenure, however, was short-lived: Long led the IRS for just 53 days before the president removed him and nominated him instead to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Iceland.
How’s that working out? It could be better. Politico reported:
First Greenland, next Iceland? Reykjavík is concerned about America’s growing territorial ambitions, after POLITICO reported that President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Iceland Billy Long joked in Washington that Iceland will be the 52nd U.S. state and he’ll be governor.
“The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has contacted the U.S. Embassy in Iceland to verify the veracity of the alleged comments,” Iceland’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Evidently, Long recently ran into Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who’s also serving as Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, at which point the former congressman joked about making Iceland the nation’s 52nd state. (Canada, evidently, was envisioned as the 51st state.)
The attempt at humor was not well received. Politico’s report noted that Icelanders launched a petition urging Foreign Minister Katrín Gunnarsdóttir to reject him as ambassador.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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