US President Donald Trump on Friday continued to press for U.S. control of Greenland, telling reporters: “We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not.”
“Because if we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor,” Trump said as he hosted oil executives at the White House to discuss investments in Venezuela.
The president has repeatedly said he wants to take over Greenland either by buying the autonomous island territory or by using military force, calling it a matter of national security despite fierce pushback from Greenland, Denmark and European allies.
“Greenland is not for sale. I think our Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and our Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt has made it very, very clear. Our country belongs to the Greenlandic people,” Jacob Isbosethsen, Greenland’s head of representation to the United States, said to journalists on Thursday after a closed-door meeting with members of Congress.
When asked on Friday for how much money he believed it would take to get Greenland on board with his proposal, Trump said, “I’m not talking about money for Greenland yet. I might talk about that.”
“I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way,” Trump said.
High-profile Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have also poured cold water on Trump’s aim to acquire Greenland.
“I think it’s been made clear from our Danish friends and from our friends in Greenland that that future does not include a negotiation. There’s no willingness on their part to negotiate for the purchase or the change in title to their land, which they’ve had for so long,” Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after meeting with Isbosethsen and Denmark’s Ambassador to the United States Jesper Møller Sørensen on Thursday.
“There is no reason for a negotiation around who controls Greenland because Greenland and the United States and Denmark have been allies. We share the same values, we have worked cooperatively together,” Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said after the meeting.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, one of Trump’s top allies, notably dismissed any assertion that the U.S. would use military action to acquire Greenland.
“I don’t think anybody’s seriously considering that. And in the Congress, we’re certainly not,” Johnson said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Still, Vice President JD Vance on Thursday said to take Trump at his word on the issue and defended the administration’s interest in the island territory.
“I guess my advice to European leaders and anybody else would be to take the president of the United States seriously,” Vance told reporters at a press briefing with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“No. 1, Greenland is really important, not just to America’s missile defense, but to the world’s missile defense. No. 2, we know that there are hostile adversaries that have shown a lot of interest in that particular territory, that particular slice of the world,” Vance said.
Next week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to meet with his counterparts from Denmark and Greenland after they requested an urgent meeting with him.
Source: ABC News
--Agencies
