Trump says ‘we need Greenland’ again after Danish officials describe ‘fundamental disagreements’

President Donald Trump re-emphasized his goal of acquiring Greenland on Wednesday, shortly after top Danish officials met with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the White House.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen told reporters that the discussion was “frank and constructive” but that “fundamental disagreements” remained as Trump’s intentions were communicated bluntly.

“It’s clear that the president has a desire to conquer Greenland,” he said. Rasmussen called that result “totally unacceptable.”

According to Rasmussen, a high-level working group has been created “to explore whether we can find a common way forward.” He said he expected the group to meet for the first time in a matter of weeks.

“In our view, the group should focus on how to address American security concerns while respecting the red lines of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Rasmussen said alongside Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt.

Trump, taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon, said he would be briefed on the meeting between Vance, Rubio and Danish officials. He said he believed “something will work out.”

“Let’s see what happens. We need Greenland for national security,” Trump said.

“Have a very good relationship with Denmark, as you know. Good see. But you know, were making the Golden Dome. Were doing many things. And we really I need it,” Trump said. earlier this year he unveiled plans for a $175 billion American missile defense shield similar to Israel’s Iron Dome.

“If we No come in, Russia is going to come in and China is going to enter. AND there is Another thing Denmark can do about it, but we can do everything we can about it,” Trump added.

Denmark’s Rasmussen said he rejected such comments from Trump during Wednesday’s meeting at the White House, which he said focused primarily on security.

“I think it’s a necessity if we want to have a proper debate,” Rasmussen said. The Danish Foreign Minister told reporters that there is no “instant threat from China and Russia, at least not a threat that we cannot confront.”

Meanwhile, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has argued that Trump’s use of the US military to seize Greenland would mark “the end of NATO” because Denmark, a NATO ally like the United States, is obliged to come to the island’s defense, as are other European NATO allies.

European Union defense commissioner Andrius Kubilius echoed his dire hypothetical scenario, arguing that Europe would be forced to confront the United States if Greenland’s NATO allies had to protect it from an attempted American takeover.

A journalist pressed Trump on whether he would leave the NATO alliance to acquire Greenland.

“YO I wouldn’t do it be telling you what Am willing to do. Certainly, Am I’m not going to give up options, but is very important. Greenland is very important for national security, including Denmark,” Trump said.

Danes surprised by US rhetoric towards Greenland

Danish and Greenlandic officials have consistently said Greenland is not for sale, even as Rubio appeared to try to temper Trump’s strong rhetoric – and defuse congressional opposition to the use of force – by raising the idea of ​​the United States buying the island, saying Trump has talked about doing so since his first term.

A source familiar with the emerging rift said the political pronouncement came as a shock, and that the U.S. goal of purchasing the island was never communicated to Copenhagen, which the source said had never received an offer of any kind.

State Department officials under Rubio had never pushed a policy aimed at acquiring Greenland, the source said, and Copenhagen had been satisfied with bilateral relations for most of 2025.

That changed in December, when Trump named Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as his special envoy to Greenland, a move designed to direct policy from the White House rather than through the State Department, the source said.

Vance, who traveled to Greenland last March, said last Thursday: “I think my advice to European leaders and anyone else would be to take the president of the United States seriously.”

Following some of Trump’s comments that he wanted Greenland to be part of the United States, which came days after he ordered the U.S. military to attack Venezuela, Danish and Greenlandic officials in Washington went to Capitol Hill to express their concerns to lawmakers.

A source familiar with those meetings said there was a change in tone among Republicans, who said they took the president’s threats seriously, not as something to laugh about.

The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee emerged from his meeting with Danish envoys dismissing any suggestion that Greenland’s future was in dispute.

“I think our Danish friends and our friends in Greenland have made it clear that that future does not include a negotiation,” said Senator Roger Wicker.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of American lawmakers was crossing the Atlantic to meet in Copenhagen later this week.

Security in the Arctic as a central argument

Trump has said the United States would demand sovereignty over the island for its own national security purposes, suggesting that China and Russia could pose a threat to the United States if they seized the island.

“Basically, their defense is two dog sleds,” Trump said of Greenland, where the United States has a military base and 150 soldiers stationed. “Meanwhile, we have Russian destroyers and submarines and Chinese destroyers and submarines all over the place.”

Danish officials have signaled new investments there and a willingness to work with NATO and the United States to protect the island. The kingdom announced a $6.5 billion Arctic defense package last year.

The top Danish lawmaker overseeing defense said the threat to the island came not from the east, but from the United States, its NATO ally across the Atlantic.

“My job is to be in charge of security in Greenland and I get all the relevant information about it,” Rasmus Jarlov wrote in a post on “They don’t.”

Chinese and Russian provocations have been concentrated closer to Alaska than Greenland, said Connor McPartland, noting that China has minimal commercial interests in the island and there has been no increase in Russian or Chinese naval activity near the island.

McPartland, who was deputy director of the Pentagon’s Office for Global and Arctic Security until September, said Trump’s attention to Arctic security emerges as a necessary focus on an overlooked region.

“Worrying about the Arctic is not just worrying about the Arctic,” he said. “It has ramifications for our global security, not just in this small slice of the top of the world.”

“In my office, we would like to say that the Arctic is the gateway to the homeland, because most of the really existential threats to the United States that we think about [like a] nuclear missile… they’re going to fly over the pole to get to the continental United States,” said McPartland, who is now deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative.

“It’s the fastest way to get to the United States, from Russia, from North Korea, from Iran, from China.”

A 1951 treaty between the United States and Greenland allows the U.S. military, which has reduced its presence to a single base in Greenland, to increase its presence as it wants. During the Cold War, the United States had 17 military installations there.

“There are really no problems to solve if the United States controls Greenland,” McPartland said. “We can build infrastructure, we can station troops, we can operate from Greenland almost at will, as long as we recognize the sovereignty of Denmark and Greenland.”

ABC News’ Mariam Khan, Hannah Demissie and Allie Pecorin contributed to this report.