One of the problems with Donald Trump’s tendency to say outlandish, implausible things is that it can be difficult to tell when he is being a distraction and when he is serious. Unfortunately for Denmark, it looks like Trump’s obsession with taking over Greenland is the latter. According to a report by the Financial Times, a call between Trump and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen went awry, and now the Danes are scared.
The fact is that Trump and Frederiksen spoke on the phone last week for about 45 minutes, which was expected to be a sort of showdown between the two sides, given Trump’s public statement that he would like to take Greenland out of Danish hands. Obviously, there were not many pleasantries before Trump moved into an aggressive phase.
Although Frederiksen reportedly expressed a willingness to cooperate with America, potentially allowing the US to place military bases on the island and excavate rich mineral reserves, this was not enough for Trump. He wants to buy Greenland in its entirety and was reportedly unwilling to back down from his position. “He was very firm. It was a cold shower,” one European official told the Financial Times. “It was hard to take it seriously before. But now I think it is serious and potentially very dangerous.”
So that’s not good. Officials described the Danish government as being in “crisis mode” after the call and said they were “absolutely freaked out by this.” Denmark, which is a NATO member along with the United States, is now staring down the barrel of potential tariffs that could hurt the country’s economy until they are willing to let Greenland go.
They have reason to be concerned. According to the U.S. State Department, America is Denmark’s largest export market, and business between the two countries provides nearly 80,000 jobs for Danes. So Trump has a lot of leverage to put pressure on Denmark, and he has reportedly sent some of the most annoying people possible to the talks. Ken Howery, a former member of the PayPal mafia along with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, is reportedly the American contact person, awaiting Senate approval. And there’s another of Thiel’s ghouls, Dryden Brown, who seems ready to jump at the chance to turn Greenland into a techno-utopia, whether they want it or not.
In any case, they don’t want it. Greenland is not happy about being treated like a political football. Although the island is home to only 57,000 people, it has its own autonomous government, and its leader, Mute B. Egede, has stated that they have no interest in becoming an American property. So far, this doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact on the entire conversation. Instead, Trump and company do not pay attention to real people and think exclusively about exploiting the land.
