January 21, 2026
President Trump formally told the world – not on social media – but in person that the United States will own Greenland maybe not by force – but he said he wants it. He made the comments at the world economic forum in Davos Switzerland this morning. He talked about a lot of things but I want to focus on Greenland in this video.
Obviously as I have been reporting Greenland is a territory of Denmark which is a NATO ally. Denmark and Greenland have said point blank – that Greenland is not for sale and they do not want to be owned by the United States. Our NATO and European allies have also said they will defend Greenland’s sovereignty. Well – today Trump spent a lot of time talking about how ungrateful NATO is to the United States and how they should be thanking the US by getting out of the way and handing over Greenland.
First of all –he means Greenland – though he did call it Iceland several times during the speech. And the fact is – the only time in the history of NATO that article five was invoked – was by the United States after the September 11th attack – the NATO allies were in fact there. They fought alongside the us for years in Iraq and Afghanistan and that includes Danish soldiers who also lost their lives in the war on terror. But Trump also talked about the US not being able to defend Greenland unless we own it. But that’s not true either and Trump proved it when he talked about the history of the United States and Greenland when the US defended it during World War II. We didn’t own it then. But Trump says that was a big mistake.
Except that’s not what happened either. Quick history lesson here….it is true that the United States did come to the defense of Denmark and Greenland during World War II. It’s true the Germans did invade Denmark and the world was concerned that Germany would invade Greenland too. But in 1941 while the Danish government was under German control, the United States signed a defense agreement with the Danish ambassador to allow the US use Greenland as a base. The US built lots of bases on Greenland and successfully kept the Germans from establishing a major foothold on Greenland but it was the allied forces – not just the United States – and technically it was primarily the British — who liberated Denmark. The fact is the United States never owned Greenland so there’s no way the United States could have “given it back.” The US never owned it in the first place. And in the formal treaty that the United States signed with Denmark in 1951 that formally gave the US full access to use Greenland for military defense – the US recognizes that Greenland belongs to Denmark.
Back to Davos – Trump insisted that the United States needed Greenland to complete his golden dome project. He says it’s a national security issue and trump wrapped up the Greenland portion of his speech with what sounds like at best – an ultimatum and at worse – a threat.
Watch Trump’s entire speech here.
