Donald Trump has postponed a planned trip to Denmark after the Danish Prime Minister told him that Greenland is not for sale, NBC News reports. Greenland is officially part of Danish territory and has about 56,000 residents.
Trump had been scheduled to visit Denmark on an official state visit after having been invited by Queen Margrethe II. However, days ago, Trump began expressing interest in buying Greenland. However, Danish PM Mette Frederiksen said that Greenland is not for sale.
On Tuesday night, Trump tweeted that if the Greenland sale is off the table, then there’s nothing to talk about.
“Based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time,” he tweeted.
He then thanked Frederiksen for being so direct about the sale not happening, saying that her forthrightness saved both sides a lot of time. He did, however, promise to reschedule “some time in the future.”
Last week, according to a companion NBC News report, sources close to the White House reported that Trump had expressed interest off and on over the years, “with varying degrees of seriousness.” Sources say that the former real estate developer himself viewed the purchase as a sort of real estate deal in itself.
On Sunday, Trump confirmed that the reports were true and that he really was interested in purchasing the island.
BREAKING: President Trump postpones his Denmark trip after the prime minister refuses to sell Greenland https://t.co/9to6ose33E pic.twitter.com/hscOv0qxZj
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 21, 2019
Though the seemingly-strange idea appeared to have come out of the blue, The Washington Examiner wrote that the notion of the U.S. acquiring Greenland isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Specifically, the paper notes that the island, on which the U.S. has a military base, is strategically located near the North Pole, putting the U.S. in a position to monitor missiles from China or Russia that might fly over the pole.
With the sale off the table and the visit canceled, Danes are scratching their heads about Trump canceling the visit.
As The Guardian reports, while Prime Minister Frederiksen insists that the kerfuffle over the Greenland sale won’t sour relations between Denmark and the U.S., other Danes are letting loose.
For example, Eva Flyvholm, the foreign policy chair for Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance, told Danish media that, “There are already many good reasons to think that the man is a fool, and now he has given another good reason.”
Similarly, former Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt tweeted that the entire ordeal was “deeply insulting to the people of Greenland and Denmark.”