Donald Trump wants to buy GREENLAND: President tells his aides he’s considering purchasing the island from Denmark for its resources
- President Trump is showing strong interest in buying the island of Greenland as sources reveal he has repeatedly asked his advisers if it would be possible
- The 811,000-square-mile island of icy terrain in the Atlantic inhabits about 56,000 people and is an autonomous Danish territory
- ‘What do you guys think about that?’ Trump reportedly asked a table of associates last spring. ‘Do you think it would work?’
- It’s unclear how exactly the U.S. would go about buying the largest island in the world after two failed attempts in 1946 and 1867
President Trump is showing strong interest in buying the island of Greenland.
Two sources tell the Wall Street Journal that Donald Trump has repeatedly asked his advisers with ‘varying degrees of seriousness’ if it would be possible for the U.S. to acquire the autonomous Danish territory for its resources and geopolitical significance.
‘What do you guys think about that?’ Trump asked a table of associates last spring when the idea of buying the island first came to be, a source told the Wall Street Journal. ‘Do you think it would work?’
However, it’s unclear how exactly the U.S. would go about buying the largest island in the world after the U.S.’s two failed attempts by President Truman to buy it for $100millin in 1946 and before that by the State Department in 1867.
President Trump is showing strong interest in buying the island of Greenland as sources reveal he has repeatedly asked his advisers if it would be possible
The 811,000-square-mile island of icy terrain in the Atlantic inhabits about 56,000 people and is an autonomous Danish territory
The 811,000-square-mile island of icy terrain in the Atlantic inhabits about 56,000 people, and though it is technically in North American waters, the self governing land is culturally European.
Its foreign and security policy is handled by Copenhagen.
During last spring’s exchange with advisers, Trump got the idea after he’d heard that Denmark was having financial problems because of the subsidies it pays to Greenland.
According to the Journal, Greenland relies on $591 million of subsidies from Denmark annually, which make up about 60% of its annual budget.
The U.S. already has an airbase in Greenland, which is part of a state-of-the-art ballistic missile early warning system and satellite tracking system.
Trump is scheduled to make his first visit to Denmark early next month, although the visit appears to be unrelated.
Officials with the Denmark’s Royal House and the Danish embassy in Washington did have yet to respond to the Wall street Journal’s request for comment on the matter.
It’s unclear how exactly the U.S. would go about buying the largest island in the world after two failed attempts in 1946 and 1867
This comes as it’s revealed NASA scientists are flying over the island on a mission to track melting ice.
It may not be a wise investment for Trump, as research shows Greenland has been melting faster in the last decade and this summer, it has seen two of the biggest melts on record since 2012.
Global warming is the chief culprit, but scientists want to know how this is happening. Both warmer air and warmer water are eating away at Greenland, causing it to lose billions of tons of ice daily in the summer.
A team of scientists and engineers aboard a research plane this week are dropping probes into the ice to help figure out which is the bigger cause.
If water is playing a bigger role than scientists had thought, that could mean seas will be rising faster than expected.