The Daily - Trump’s Bid for Greenland

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

In his recent address before Congress, President Trump talked once again about his big ambitions for Greenland.He told the icebound island’s “incredible people” that he supported their right to determine their future. But he ended his message with a threat, declaring, “One way or the other we are going to get it.”Jeffrey Gettleman, an international correspondent for The New York Times who recently traveled to the island, explains what Mr. Trump wants from Greenland, and whether he may actually get it.Guest: Jeffrey Gettleman, an international correspondent for The New York Times, based in London and covering global events.Background reading: Trump said the U.S. would “get” Greenland. Greenlanders were not impressed.Jeffrey Gettleman spent 12 days reporting around Greenland about its big moment.The harsh reality behind the glittering promise of Greenland’s minerals.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Ivor Prickett for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams. This is The Daily. In a recent address before Congress, Donald Trump talked once again about his big ambitions for Greenland. We strongly support your right to determine your own future. And if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America we need. But he ended his message with a threat.

I think we're going to get it one way or the other. We're going to get it. Today, my colleague Jeffrey Gettleman on what Trump wants from Greenland and whether he may actually get it. It's Tuesday, March 11th. So, Jeffrey, President Trump has repeatedly said that he wants Greenland. And before we get into whether that is even possible, can you just explain to us why is the president so interested in this place?

Well, there's a few reasons. The first reason is its size and its location. Greenland is enormous. It's the largest island in the world. It has only 56,000 people, but it's this gigantic space. And it's located in a very strategic spot along the Arctic Ocean where shipping lanes are increasingly important as global warming melts ice that had blocked those areas forever up until now.

And there's a lot of interest in controlling that space by Russia, by China, by European nations and by the US. There's also vast mineral resources on Greenland. There are huge deposits of iron, zinc, copper, platinum, rare earth elements that have become really important in high tech industries. And that's another reason why Trump and his circle are really interested in taking over the island. But there's one big problem. Greenland is actually part of Denmark. It's been like that for more than 300 years. The Danes colonized Greenland in the 1700s. Denmark still controls its foreign policy,

its defense, and other important issues, even though Greenland is part of North America. That is so interesting because when Trump first started talking about Greenland, it just felt, I think, to me and to a lot of people, random and also kind of outrageous. But what you just laid out, those reasons for why the U.S. might be interested in Greenland

actually sound quite compelling and strategic. Totally. It seemed really random when it first came up, but this isn't the first time a U.S. president has been interested in Greenland. The U.S. has seen Greenland as this important piece of territory for a long time. In the 1860s, the U.S. had purchased Alaska from Russia, and Greenland was seen as the next big piece of territory to expand America's ambitions in the North American continent.

It didn't go anywhere and it just kind of died. It then came up again in 1910. There was an American plan to acquire Greenland through a trade of different islands, but that didn't go anywhere either. And then in World War II, Nazi Germany took over Denmark as part of its expansion across continental Europe. And the United States was really worried that there could be a Nazi incursion on Greenland as a stepping stone towards the United States.

And so the US established these bases all around Greenland. And then after the war, America thinks, hey, you know, it just makes perfect sense that we take over Greenland forever. And the United States offered $100 million in gold to Denmark, which had been shattered by World War II. But the Danes were not interested. Again, they just did not want to get rid of this territory. Okay, so it sounds like there's also a long history here of Denmark making it very clear

that Greenland is not for sale. Absolutely. So after World War II, Denmark decided we need to keep Greenland. And in 1953, they made a decision to take it from being a colony to being part of Denmark. And what that meant for Greenlanders was that they were now citizens of Denmark. They were entitled to the same rights, to the same benefits. They were Danish citizens. And that led to more investment, more development, a closer connection between Greenland and Denmark.

So then how does Greenland end up back in the international conversation? So for decades, it really was not in the international conversation. The Cold War was happening. The US seemed to be happy with having its military bases on Greenland. Both Denmark and the U.S. are members of NATO. And so Greenland was seen as a NATO territory. And the American government did not pursue a serious plan to take it over until 2019. That's when Donald Trump, during his first term, floats this idea that the U.S. should buy Greenland from Denmark.

A small team is set up to work on this, and there's several meetings between American officials and Danish officials to discuss this. But it's all kept secret. President Trump has reportedly raised the possibility that the U.S. might buy Greenland. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump has discussed the purchase with varying degrees of seriousness during his talk. Then the story begins to leak out. NBC News has confirmed President Trump has talked to aides and members of Congress about possibly buying Greenland.

This is a very good idea. In fact, we could move one of the Red Sox spring training camps there. And it was mostly taken as a joke. Can we buy the Maldives? I desperately need a vacation. The whole bizarre story prompted Conan O'Brien to make the trip over to Greenland. Hello, I'm here to buy your country. Oh, hello.

Hello, I'm here to buy your country. Oh, hello. Hello, I'm here to buy your country. Like, why on earth would the US want to buy Greenland? Returning to Washington, the president confirming it is no joking matter. So the concept came up, and I said, certainly, I'd be strategically it's interesting. Then Trump responded. Essentially it's a large real estate deal. A lot of things could be done. It could be a great real estate deal but it wasn't a priority. We're looking at it it's not number one on the burner. And all

this culminated in the Prime Minister of Denmark very publicly announcing that Greenland was not for sale. She even called this whole idea absurd. All they had to do is say, no, we'd rather not do that or we'd rather not talk about it. And Trump seemed to take real issue with that. She's not talking to me. She's talking to the United States of America.

You don't talk to the United States that way, at least under me. But then it just kind of went away. Until now. Until just a few weeks ago, when it came back with a vengeance. And with all this talk about Greenland, Greenland suddenly in the news, I thought it was important to go there and try to understand how the people of Greenland are looking at this enormous geopolitical situation.

And to figure out what do the Greenlanders want. I spent the first spent so long in Storbrit. I have not received a normal report from the Serbian government. And so I flew to Greenland and I spent almost two weeks talking to different people from different walks of life. And what I found was the surprising openness to having a closer relationship with the US. We'll be right back. So, Geoffrey, you went to Greenland, which I think it's fair to say a lot of Americans have never been to. So first, can you just paint a little bit of a picture of what life is like there? I found Greenland beautiful and very different from any place I had ever been. It's really icy and snowy.

All you can see is white. White mountains, white snow on the ground, icebergs floating in the ocean, and that ice defines life. And I went to this one place on the west coast called Ilulisset, which is a town of about 5,000 people. And one morning I went with a family and we got to a place where there were all these guys standing around these holes that they had smashed into the ground, reeling up these lines and catching lots of fish. And in this little town everything revolves around fishing, even though it's like a very difficult environment to work in. Minus 20 degrees below zero Celsius, winds blowing and I

met this fisherman named Frederick. He's gutting one fish after the other, throwing the scraps on the snow and pulling out another fish, doing it again and again. Yeah. We talk to everybody in the world. And I just started talking to him and right off the bat...

America and Trump is a headline. Yeah. He tells me there are all these headlines about Greenland and the US. So he's really aware of this conversation that's going on about these headlines about Greenland in the US. So he's really aware of this conversation that's going on about the fate of Greenland. What do you want for Greenland? I want freedom away from Denmark.

Frederick felt that Greenland should break off from Denmark. I hope that Greenland can sell fish to America. He tells me that he's frustrated that Denmark still controls many aspects of life in Greenland. And one of those is its fishing industry. And he felt that all this attention that Trump is putting on Greenland is going to create more opportunities where they're going to be able to strike up its own relationships and trade agreements and that will open doors for all kinds of business including the fishing business. How many people are in USA? 350 million. They are hungry.

They are hungry. Maybe they will eat this. That would be good, right? Another person I met that day was Laila. Her family runs a small tourism business, and she took us out across the ice on her dog slits. I started my own company in 2021. I want to show tourists dog sledding, ice fishing. I want to show it. But some of the Danish agencies don't use me. Lila told me that her business has really struggled to compete with these bigger Danish companies that have

come to the island. She says they have more resources and much better connections abroad. Tourists always come to our town because they want to see the icebergs or the glaciers but lately Danish companies came to our town to make money on the high seasons. And so given all that, I asked her, did she want to break off from Denmark? Do you think independence would help? I want to be our country independent. Why? We know our land better. We want to make our own rules.

She thinks that with independence there will be more opportunities for locals like her. And when you heard this news a couple weeks ago that Trump wanted to take Greenland, how did you feel? If we are going to be independent, of course we can cooperate with another countries like America. Do you want to be part of America? I don't want to be part of America. Maybe we can make deals. So Leila sees herself as a Greenlander.

She said that she's not European, she doesn't want to be American, she feels very strongly about her Greenlandic identity. But she did say that she wanted closer relations with the U.S. and she felt very confident that if that happened, it would improve the lives of Greenlanders. But not everybody I talked to was so excited about all this attention that Trump is putting on Greenland. Do you feel Danish? Or Danish? A little Danish? No, I'm Greenlander.

I met the mayor of Ilulissat. His name is Pele Jeromaisen. And he's pro-independence, just like everybody we met there. But he's also worried. Do you see all this attention with Trump in the U.S. as an opportunity? It's frightening me a little bit. What makes you a little scared about this Trump? His attitude is, I will have some soldiers down in the border, I will take Panama back, and so he had been talking about Greenland so many times. So what do you do about Greenland?

And he's been paying close attention to everything that Trump is doing. And he brought up the Panama Canal, troops being sent to the U.S.-Mexico border. And his point to me was, Trump says one thing, it seems really outlandish, and then he does it. Or maybe he doesn't do it.

And his capriciousness and unpredictability is what makes the mayor nervous. I can figure him out because his way of thinking is so opposite what we are thinking. We are thinking like Europeans or something. He makes a decision, he says, oh, you can't do that. But he does. He does. And he was asking me, so what do you think Trump is going to do about Greenland? He was pointing right at me. What do you predict?

And I just kind of shrugged and said, I really don't know. And the mayor shook his head and he seemed genuinely upset and said, we're a tiny country. He's a superpower country. So what can we do when he comes? What can we do if Trump comes? What can we really do? So, Jeffrey, you've met a range of Greenlanders, some of whom are

enthusiastic about Trump's attention. Some of whom are enthusiastic about Trump's attention, some of whom are worried about the attention, but they all seem to agree that they want independence from Denmark. So can you talk a little bit about why specifically Greenlanders want to break away from Denmark, so much so that even people like the mayor might warily be interested in closer relationships with the US. There's a sense that Denmark doesn't respect Greenland and that there's this long legacy of racism, exploitation, treating Greenlanders as second-class citizens. And Greenlanders come from a different culture.

They're part of this wider Inuit community that lives in the Arctic Circle, in Alaska, in Canada, and parts of Russia. They have their own language, their own traditions, their own history of how they survive in this very hostile environment. And I met a number of people who said that they were mistreated, they were made fun of, that they were called racial slurs. I also heard a lot about the colonial legacy and things that Denmark had done when Greenland was a colony. They destroyed local traditions. They outlawed some of the religious practices that Greenlanders had been doing for

centuries. And there was this scandal in the 1960s and 70s where Danish doctors were inserting IUD birth control devices into Greenlandic girls as young as like 12 in an attempt to keep the population down. And they did this to thousands of girls without them really understanding what was being done to them. And this was kept secret until just a few years ago. And when this scandal broke and the news spread that all these women in Greenland had been subject to this,

it caused a lot of anger towards Denmark. All these things together, that's what brings us to this moment where just about everybody now wants independence. So let's talk about independence for a minute because I wanna understand what would it actually take for Greenland to become independent? Greenlanders have the right to call a referendum

and declare independence. They only got that right in 2009. But they haven't done it yet because there's a lot of big, sticky issues that they have to solve before they can become their own independent country. Like what? More than 50% of Greenland's budget comes directly from Denmark. Hundreds of millions of dollars each year comes from Denmark to pay for roads, schools, social services, education, just about everything.

And if they became independent, they'd need to fill that hole. One solution, many Greenlanders say, is developing their mineral industry. But it's been really hard developing this sector because of the extreme cold weather, the ice that blocks ports, the fact that there's very few roads on Greenland. And so the mineral trade seems like a long-term solution, but not necessarily what Greenland would need right now if it declares independence. So in a perfect world, what did the Greenlanders you spoke with see as the ideal relationship they wanted to have with the U.S.?

That's a really good question. And I talked to a lot of people about exactly that. And what I kept hearing was talk about a free association agreement. The US has relationships with a few countries in the South Pacific where America pays for many of their expenses and in turn these countries allow the US to use their territory for military bases. They vote with the US at the UN. They're very loyal allies of the United States of America.

Several people I met in Greenland, including politicians, but also less political types, had the same thought. They said, we should establish a free association agreement with the US, where we are an independent country, but we have a very close relationship with the US. So I can understand why having a strong relationship with the United States would benefit Greenland economically, but just looking at how the United States is treating its most important allies right now,

slapping tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and telling Europe it's basically on its own to defend Ukraine. If I'm a Greenlander, aren't I looking at all of this and kind of feeling like the mayor you spoke to who's really nervous about the idea of cozying up to the U.S. right now? Yeah, a lot of Greenlanders feel that way. But even from the ones who are a little nervous, I get the sense of enjoyment and comeuppance that finally we're giving it back to Denmark. And already all the attention that the US has put on Greenland is helping the Greenlanders extract certain concessions from Denmark.

And there are things that they have been asking for for years, like Greenlandic being established as a national identity, being able to export their fish directly to world markets. These are things that Denmark resisted for a long time. And just in the past few months, with Trump breathing down their neck, they have agreed to make these concessions. So all of what you just said makes a lot of sense, but we're still talking a lot of theoreticals right now, both in terms of will Greenland become independent? Will the U.S. try to take it over? Can you just help us kind of put everything into context here? Like how likely do you see any of the major shifts we've talked about actually happening? I don't think a US invasion of Greenland is very likely.

But I do think that after 150 years of trying to take over Greenland, the US is closer today than it's ever been. Even if Greenland doesn't become part of America, most people there want to break off from Denmark, and many of them want a closer relationship with America. What this means is that the US is essentially pulling an enormous chunk of territory away from Europe at a time when things really couldn't be worse between the US and Europe.

It would also mean that the US establishes a big foothold in a very strategic area, the Arctic. And so this place that no one was really talking about five or ten years ago, it could actually turn out to be one of the more dramatic examples of a new geopolitical realignment. Jeffrey, thank you so much. My pleasure. On Tuesday, Greenlanders vote on a new parliament in what is likely to be one of the most closely watched elections that the island has ever had.

Thailand has ever had. Different political parties are presenting their different visions of the future, with some wanting a closer relationship with the United States and a quick independence from Denmark. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Wall Street had its worst day of trading this year after President Trump refused to dismiss the idea that his aggressive stance on trade could plunge the U.S. into a recession. The S&P 500 fell 2.7% on Monday, as the Canadian province of Ontario and China began to implement retaliatory tariffs on farm products and energy. And the Trump administration is trying to revoke a green card for a recent Columbia

University graduate who helped lead campus protests against Israel. The administration is relying on an obscure statute to try and make the case that the former student can be deported since he was involved in pro-Palestinian protests that the Secretary of State Marco Rubio says undermined a U.S. policy of fighting anti-Semitism. The deportation would mark an escalation of the president's crackdown on both immigration and universities that Trump has argued are too liberal. And it also raises questions about the White House's attitudes towards free speech. Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chung and Olivia Gnat.

It was edited by Maria Byrne and fact-checked by Susan Lee. Contains original music by Diane Wong, Alicia Beatupe, and Pat McCusker and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Maya Tekeli. That's it for The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.