Norway Answers Trump

The midterms are Tuesday, and President Trump, campaigning in Michigan, chose this moment to add Norway to his list of “shithole” places. Well, “shit house,” this time. (And, dear reader, prepare. The distinction matters here.)

The crime? The Oslo-based Nobel committee denied him the Peace Prize.

Visit Norway, the country’s destination marketing organization, had a response.

“We were like, well, actually, we do have the most beautiful shit houses in the world,” Christine Baglo, editor-in-chief for Visitnorway.com, told Skift tourism reporter Bailey Schulz.

On Monday night, her team changed a few headlines on a five-year-old web page that catalogs public restrooms along Norway’s scenic routes. It now reads: “Norway makes shithouses great again!” 

By Friday, traffic was more than 540 times higher than the week before.

“We thought that it’s not too political – just fun,” Baglo said. “We like these kinds of jokes. Toilet humor is actually a little bit of a thing here.”

Since Monday, the page has drawn more than 80,000 views from more than 170 countries. As of Friday morning, it was getting roughly 4,000 views an hour, and visitors stayed more than a minute and a half on average. A quarter of the page’s visitors are American.

Baglo told Schulz her inbox has been flooded with messages from Canada, the U.S., and beyond. “People saying thank you, we want to come to Norway. This has made us want to go,” she said.

Separately, but just as frivolously: ever since Barack Obama told a Cleveland crowd that Trump has the White House “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” I’ve been watching Kalshi and Polymarket for a presidential-visit market to pop. So far, nothing.

Those markets have moved, though, on what’s arguably the most-watched race of the midterms: whether Democrats can take control of the Senate. As of Friday, Kalshi put those odds at 71%. Polymarket was at 70%.

By the time we’re together next week, hopefully we’ll have clarity on all the races.

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