Trump's Greenland overtures are scaring and confusing residents
Donald Trump has doubled down on his ambition to buy Greenland using economic or military pressure. Residents of its capital of Nuuk are unhappy about it.
Until recently, Greenland's 56,000 citizens went about their lives on the sparsely populated mid-Atlantic island far from the glare of international attention. Now they find themselves — and their political future — on the shopping list of the incoming U.S. president.
President-elect Donald Trump doubled down this week on his ambition to take control of the autonomous Danish territory — as well as Canada and the Panama Canal. He told reporters that he would not rule out military or economic force to make the Arctic island part of the United States.
On the same day, his son Donald Trump Jr. visited Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, which was covered in a thick blanket of snow. If he'd looked beyond the smattering of enthusiastic supporters wearing MAGA hats who greeted him, he would have found a mixed reaction and some alarm among ordinary Greenlanders to Trump senior's suggestion of brute force.
It's "really scary," construction architect Tittus Dalager told the Danish broadcaster DR. “He says things directly, we know him for that. But it comes a little suddenly.”
Donald Trump Jr. poses for a selfie with a local man after arriving in Nuuk, Greenland on Tuesday.Emil Stach / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP via Getty ImagesAnother resident, Edvard Jensen, was more dismissive, telling DR that he didn’t believe Trump would invade Greenland. “He just wants the attention, and now he has it.”
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