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Trump administration officials are set to meet with Danish officials about Greenland on Wednesday, diplomatic sources tell CBS News.
The meeting, which has not been officially announced, comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Congress last week that President Trump is interested in purchasing the Danish territory. The White House also said Tuesday officials are discussing a wide range of options for acquiring Greenland, including using the U.S. military to take it by force.
While Rubio had downplayed the threat of military force in his remarks to reporters, Mr. Trump doubled down on the possibility Friday, saying, “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.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, who met with Danish officials last week, said on Sunday that he thinks Democrats and Republicans in Congress would unite to stop any military action aimed at taking Greenland. “We’re not going to do it the hard way, and we’re not going to do it the easy way,” he said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
“Either we’re going to continue to work with Denmark as a sovereign nation that we’re allied with, and we’re not going to treat them as an adversary or as an enemy,” the Democrat said.
Mr. Trump told the New York Times in an interview published last week that ownership of Greenland, the world’s largest island, was important because “that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success.” Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he feels the U.S. needs to acquire Greenland for defense purposes.
The escalatory language by the president in recent weeks has further stressed already strained relations with European allies. Multiple European diplomats told CBS News that they increasingly understand that America’s commitment to the defense of Europe and NATO is no longer as ironclad as it has been over the past decades — or even the past few years of the war in Ukraine, during which the U.S. rallied European countries to unify against Russian aggression. One diplomat told CBS News that the Greenland situation is a potential breaking point.
Louisiana GOP Gov. Jeff Landry, who Mr. Trump appointed as special envoy to Greenland last month, wrote Sunday on X that “History matters. The U.S. defended Greenland’s sovereignty during WWII when Denmark couldn’t.”
“After the war, Denmark re-occupied it—side stepping and ignoring UN protocol. This should be about hospitality, not hostility,” Landry said.
In response, Denmark’s Ambassador to the U.S. Jesper Møller Sørensen said “facts matter too,” and pointed out Greenland “has been a part of the Kingdom of Denmark for centuries.” He also emphasized that last week, all five of Greenland’s parties in Parliament repeated they don’t want to become part of the U.S.
“We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four party leaders said in a statement Friday night.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said earlier this month that an American military move to seize control of Greenland would amount to the end of the NATO military alliance. Denmark is a NATO member, and NATO’s Article 5 states that if a NATO ally suffers an armed attack, all members will consider it an attack on them as well and do what they need to aid the attacked nation.
“This would be disastrous,” Kaine said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” It wouldn’t just be the end of NATO, it would be America alone.”
