For Trump, Greenland is about legacy — and humiliation
A few months after the 2020 election, New York Times reporter Peter Baker and his wife, the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, traveled down to Mar-a-Lago to interview Donald Trump for their book “The Divider.” As Glasser wrote in the New Yorker on Jan. 8, they asked him in passing about his odd desire to take over Greenland, revelations of which had briefly appeared in the press and which they’d also heard about from some of his former staff. Trump told them he’d looked at the map and wondered, “Why don’t we have that?… Look at the size of this, it’s massive, and that should be part of the United States. It’s not different from a real-estate deal. It’s just a little bit larger, to put it mildly.”
It’s been speculated, notably by MSNOW’s Chris Hayes, that Trump was looking at the Mercator Projection map that we probably all remember from our grade school geography textbooks. For a variety of technical reasons, this navigation map distorts the size of the land masses near the poles. But it’s possible that Trump doesn’t know that and instead thinks that Greenland is about the size of the African continent. Greenland is about 25% bigger than Alaska, but it isn’t that big.
The president apparently got the idea of annexing Greenland from cosmetic heir Ronald Lauder, who seems to have a special interest in mineral deals both there and in Ukraine, and has been pushing Trump on the notion for years. Lauder offered to be a secret envoy to Denmark to try to make the deal. During his first term, Trump even floated a proposal to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland, as if he were playing marbles on the playground. At the time it was just another one of his kooky ideas that went nowhere, largely because the people around him were able to give him another shiny object to chase. But Trump obviously has never forgotten it, and over the past year he has shown a pathological determination to dominate the Western hemisphere, starting with his obsession for turning Canada into the 51st state, his recent incursion into Venezuela and, now, his renewed threats against Greenland, which have ratcheted up in the last few weeks.
Trump claims that the United States has to have Greenland for national security purposes because the Arctic is under threat from Russia and China. The U.S., he has said, must possess the island in order to prevent them from taking it. But his administration is not the first to notice Greenland’s strategic value, which is why there have been friendly treaties and agreements regarding it between Europe and the United States for many decades. As a semiautonomous Danish territory, Greenland is protected by NATO, which would not only marshal the U.S. military to respond to any attack but would also rally the alliance’s other 31 countries.
If the U.S. or Trump’s pals want to make deals for mineral rights, they are free to do so. There is no reason that anyone other than Greenlanders themselves must “own” the island. But as Trump told the New York Times, he feels ownership is “psychologically needed for success” — whatever that means — so he is determined to either get the people of Greenland and Denmark to give or sell the island to him, or to take it by force. Anything less than U.S. control, he said, is unacceptable.
To the Greenlanders and the Danes, Trump’s psychological need to own their country sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, and it is obviously non-negotiable.
Trump believes he can mold reality to his will, and during his decade spent variously as candidate, president and former president, he has learned that he can get away with anything.
Even though this is yet another looney episode of the Trump show, the consequences could be grave. As the Atlantic’s Tom Nichols wrote, European leaders are taking the president’s threats very seriously, as they should. He is clearly out of control and capable of anything right now, including simply issuing a late-night declaration that he has taken over Greenland and dares Denmark or anyone else to say otherwise. Trump believes he can mold reality to his will, and during his decade spent variously as candidate, president and former president, he has learned that he can get away with anything.
Perhaps everyone would ignore him as they have with his declaration that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America. But there’s a good chance he would attempt to enforce his claims, which could set off a disastrous chain of events that could see the American military stretched around the globe and aggressors like Russia and China taking advantage of the opportunity, resulting in a war in Europe and possibly Asia. Irrationally tearing up alliances for no reason is a very dangerous game.
In a show of solidarity, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway and Sweden sent troops to Greenland on Thursday for unscheduled maneuvers. The action followed a tense and dramatic meeting on Wednesday between Trump administration officials including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenland Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt. Vance and Rubio gave no quarter, and the two emissaries were forced to return home with nothing more than a promise for a “working group,” which means nothing. During an emotional interview with national broadcaster KNR about the meeting, Motzfeldt was in tears after describing the “increasing pressure” that accompanied Trump’s threats.
“We have been working very hard in our department, even though there are not many of us,” she said. “I would not normally like to say these words, but I will say them: We are very strong. We are doing our utmost. But the last few days, naturally…”
Then the tears came, before she collected herself and continued. “Oh, I am getting very emotional. I am overwhelmed. The last few days have been tough.”
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By contrast, Trump told the press, “I would like to make a deal the easy way but if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.”
The president clearly relishes humiliation. He’s been unafraid to use it in the past as one of his favorite intimidation tools. From the way Trump speaks about women, particularly journalists but also political rivals, calling them ugly and telling them “Quiet, piggy!” to the obsessive degradation of former president Joe Biden — which included Trump’s obnoxious impression of Biden during a speech in Detroit — this is one of his most offensive personality traits.
But Trump doesn’t just confine it to his domestic rivals; he also uses it on the world stage, including the most famous and disturbing example, when he and Vance verbally assaulted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a televised Oval Office meeting in February. With the weight of his country’s future on his shoulders, Zelenskyy was forced to absorb Trump and Vance’s insults and demands that he grovel before them.
On Saturday he made good on his threat to “do it the hard way” by announcing a new round of tariffs against Denmark and the NATO countries that have expressed solidarity with Greenland, including Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
With such sadistic policies and puerile behavior, the United States loses a little more respect around the world — and our society becomes a bit more decadent and cruel.
Other than a few MAGA cranks, there is no one who thinks any of this is a good idea. Both the House and the Senate have introduced bipartisan bills to prevent the American military from occupying or annexing NATO territories, including Greenland. There has even been talk of impeachment, with one of Trump’s chief GOP antagonists, the outgoing Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, declaring it “would be the end of his presidency” should Trump invade Greenland. Of course, we’ve heard such soothsaying before. But the public is equally dismayed. According to the latest Reuters-Ipsos poll, 71% of Americans disapprove of taking Greenland by military force.
None of this is having any effect on Trump’s ambition. He told Reuters in an interview that the poll is “fake” and explained that he doesn’t really care about opposition to any of his policies because “a lot of times, you can’t convince a voter. You have to just do what’s right. And then a lot of the things I did were not really politically popular. They turned out to be when it worked out so well.”
The president is now in the business of legacy building, which basically means slapping his name on everything in sight. (He told French president Emmanuel Macron on a tour of Mount Vernon that “If [Washington] was smart, he would’ve put his name on it. You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”)
Trump believes that seizing Greenland, one way or the other, would be his greatest legacy of all, to rival Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase or maybe even the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. But it’s really nothing more than the plan for the new White House ballroom on steroids — and no doubt he plans to rename it Trumpland. Unfortunately, this egomaniac could start World War III in the process.
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