Greenland’s prime minister said Sunday that the U.S. ‘will not get’ the resource-rich island in the Atlantic.
President Donald Trump wants to annex the self-governing territory of Denmark, a NATO ally of the United States, claiming it is needed for national security purposes.
‘President Trump says that the United States ‘will get Greenland.’ Let me be clear: The United States will not get it. We do not belong to anyone else. We decide our own future,’ Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a Facebook post.
Vice President JD Vance, second lady Usha Vance, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee visited Pituffik Space Base, the Department of Defense’s northernmost military installation, in Greenland on Friday.
In a Saturday interview with NBC, Trump said that military force wasn’t off the table in regards to acquiring Greenland, according to the Associated Press.
‘I think there’s a good possibility that we could do it without military force,’ Trump said. ‘This is world peace, this is international security,’ he said, but added: ‘I don’t take anything off the table.’
Although the Danish territory has said it is seeking independence from Copenhagen but isn’t interested in becoming part of the U.S., Trump has repeatedly floated, dating back to his first administration, a desire to secure Greenland for the U.S. as Russian and Chinese presence grows in the Arctic.
Polls have shown that nearly all Greenlanders oppose becoming part of the United States. Anti-American protesters, some wearing ‘Make America Go Away’ caps and holding ‘Yankees Go Home’ banners, have staged some of the largest demonstrations ever seen in Greenland.
Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan, Diana Stancy and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.