Donald Trump Jr. is scheduled to visit Greenland this week after his father, President-elect Donald Trump, suggested last month that the United States should take ownership of the Danish territory “for national security reasons.”
Trump Jr. plans to head to the island on Tuesday to film a short video for a podcast and has no plans to meet with government officials, the Associated Press reported. Denmark’s Foreign Ministry added to CNN that it had no further comment on the matter because the trip was not an “official visit to the United States.”
The president-elect confirmed the visit in a post on his Truth Social platform, saying he had heard Greenlanders were “MAGA” and vowing that the island would benefit “enormously” under U.S. control.
“My son Don Jr. and various representatives will be traveling there to visit some of the most spectacular locations and attractions,” Trump wrote. “Greenland is an amazing place, and people will benefit tremendously if it becomes part of our country. We will protect and cherish it from the very vicious outside world. Make Greenland great again!”
After first saying in 2019 that he was weighing a “massive real estate deal” to purchase the territory, Trump again emphasized his proposal for the United States to take control of Greenland late last month.
“For national security and freedom around the world, the United States believes ownership and control of Greenland is absolutely essential,” the president-elect said last month when announcing his appointment as U.S. ambassador to Denmark.
The comments then and now came as a surprise to Greenlandic and Danish officials, who dismissed the suggestion and said the islands were not for sale.
“Greenland is ours,” Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Egede said in a statement last month. “We are not for sale, we never are for sale. We must not lose our years-long struggle for freedom.”
