January 9, 2026
I told you he wasn’t kidding. President Trump again – today – talked about the United States “taking” Greenland. And the way he framed it by saying — either the easy way or the hard way – that is a significant escalation in his rhetoric.
As I have reported – Greenland is a territory of Denmark – a NATO ally. All of our European NATO allies put out a statement earlier this week – that didn’t have trump’s name on it but it was definitely directed at him. They said they are going to defend Denmark’s territorial integrity. And they along with the United States should be upholding demarch’s sovereign rights. That’s a nice way of saying no…you can’t take Greenland. Well today trump said NATO needs to butt out.
Ok – a couple of things. One — I’m not sure why Trump said there would be no NATO if it weren’t for him. NATO has been going strong since 1949. There have been no plans to disband either in the past, present or future. Trump may be talking about the fact that because of him – NATO countries have increased their financial contribution to security which happened both during his first term and in this second term. But if that hadn’t happened – I’m not sure why trump believes NATO would have disbanded. There’s no evidence to support that. But leaders in demark have said this week that there’s one sure fire way for NATO to disband…and that would be if trump decides to use military force to take Greenland away from Denmark. Now — to explain this second point I want to show you a map.
Here’s the United States and here’s Greenland. Trump has been adamant that the US must own Greenland because it’s a national security issue – more on the owning point in a second. Trump says there are Russian and Chinese ships swarming Greenland right now and as you just heard him say – if the u-s doesn’t occupy Greenland they will and trump doesn’t want Russia or China to be our neighbor. Ok – so – while Russia and China have increased their military exercises in the artic mostly near Russia – and frankly closer to Alaska – there is no evidence of Russian or Chinese military ships swarming Greenland specifically right now. That doesn’t mean they won’t or can’t. It just means right now it’s unclear what the president is talking about.
Now to the owning Greenland part. The fact is – if Greenland is such a national security concern for the president – he could simply add more united states military bases to Greenland. No problem. The United States and Denmark have a treaty that’s been in place since 1951 that says in article two the United States can establish and operate such defenses as it sees fit on Greenland. At the height – the United States had more than 15 military bases on Greenland but over time – those were closed and now we have one left. It was an air force base and now it’s a space force base. So if we have this treaty with Denmark and we can add military bases on Greenland — wouldn’t that solve the national security issue? Trump says no that’s not good enough.
The issue with that is – the leaders of demark and of Greenland say the United States can’t own Greenland because Greenland is not for sale. There was also some reporting that trump was considering giving every Greenlander between $10,000 and $100,000 each to vote in favor of becoming part of the United States. But today – Trump says he’s not thinking about giving money to them at this point. But the secretary of state is going to be meeting with representatives from Greenland and Denmark next week after they requested an urgent meeting.
Watch the White House meeting here.
