Trump declared Tuesday he would not exclude using economic or military coercion to gain control of Greenland, a self-ruling Danish territory, and the Panama Canal. “I’m not gonna commit to that. No. It might be that you’ll have to do something,” he said.
“We need Greenland for national security purposes,” he added. “People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do they should give it up because we need it for national security.”
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., landed in Greenland on Tuesday on what he called a private visit. His entourage included the elder Trump’s personnel director, Sergio Gor, and bombastic conservative activist Charlie Kirk; the U.S. president-elect described the group as his “reps.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who rebuffed Trump’s first proposal to purchase Greenland in 2019, calling it “absurd,” had already reiterated Tuesday — before Trump’s refusal to rule out acquiring Greenland by force — that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.”
“There is a lot of support among the people of Greenland that Greenland is not for sale and will not be in the future either,” she added.
Rasmussen defended Frederiksen’s remarks, which some in Denmark criticized as weak, insisting she was not “wavering” in her support for Greenland.