{"id":415268,"date":"2026-01-18T17:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T17:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/415268\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T17:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T17:12:14","slug":"denmark-incensed-by-trumps-push-for-greenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/415268\/","title":{"rendered":"Denmark incensed by Trump’s push for Greenland"},"content":{"rendered":"

COPENHAGEN, Denmark \u2014 On a cold, foggy afternoon in downtown Copenhagen, military veteran Flemming Almind joined thousands of his fellow Danes in what he said was the first protest he\u2019s ever participated in, opposing the Trump administration\u2019s push to acquire Greenland.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve actually never done this before, demonstrating, but this is very important to me,\u201d Almind, 57, told NBC News. He said he had been following developments and felt \u201cI need to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

An estimated 10,000 Danes gathered in the city hall square Saturday afternoon to express their frustration with President Donald Trump\u2019s rhetoric.<\/p>\n

The crowd, which included parents with small children as well as older Danes, wore hats in the style of Trump\u2019s MAGA caps but scrawled with \u201cMake America Go Away,\u201d and waved Greenlandic flags and signs saying, \u201cHands off Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ProtestersProtesters gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Jan. 17 to demonstrate against the Trump administration\u2019s push to acquire Greenland.Frank Thorp V<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to support Greenland,\u201d said protester Susanne Kristensen. \u201cWe are Danes, Greenland are Danes, even though they\u2019re Greenlanders, and we just have to stick together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some protesters expressed fears that if they spoke out about Trump in the press or on social media, his administration could bar them from visiting the United States while he was in office. \u201cI won\u2019t go there until he\u2019s out,\u201d Kristensen said.<\/p>\n

\"AA Danish protester holds a sign at a protest in Copenhagen, Denmark, against the Trump administration\u2019s Greenland push.Frank Thorp V<\/p>\n

The protest came just before Trump announced fresh tariffs on Denmark and its allies<\/a>, a step that has infuriated European leaders and threatens to reignite a trade war that was meant to have been settled <\/a>with a deal signed by Trump months ago.<\/p>\n

A bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation, intending to express solidarity with the country in the face of Trump\u2019s rhetoric, was meanwhile wrapping up a visit to the Danish capital, where it met with the Danish prime minister and key Danish and Greenlandic officials.<\/p>\n

The visit by the group of 10 American lawmakers from both the House and Senate has not gone unnoticed, with the protesters saying they were closely following the developments. \u201cIt makes a huge difference that Congress members come here and listen,\u201d Kristime Due, who was attending the protest in Copenhagen, told NBC News.<\/p>\n

The delegation\u2019s visit was arranged on short notice and has played an almost counterprogramming role to the statements the Trump administration has been making. Trump\u2019s desire to own a part of the Danish kingdom is all over the airwaves in Danish news broadcasts, and Danes say it\u2019s a constant conversation.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, speaks at a press conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, after meeting with Danish officials.Frank Thorp V<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a respectful and constructive delegation that came more to listen than to talk,\u201d Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told reporters on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that\u2019s been made clear to us is that the people of Denmark are very anxious, are quite concerned, and the people of Greenland even more so,\u201d Coons said, adding that the current tone of statements from the White House is \u201cnot constructive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coons said the delegation is \u201chaving active conversations amongst ourselves about what is the wisest course of action\u201d to de-escalate the rhetoric when they return to Washington, but some members of the delegation do not want to rush into a hasty symbolic vote that could fall along party lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worry that going to a specific legislative vehicle right now today is premature,\u201d Coons said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot allow this to become a partisan matter. We simply cannot,\u201d Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said. \u201cI think the way that we keep it from being partisan is by full education, dismissing some of the assumptions that some may have and then acting together,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The members of Congress met with members of the Danish Parliament on Friday, with the Social Democrats\u2019 foreign affairs spokesman, Flemming M\u00f8ller Mortensen, describing the discussion as \u201cfruitful\u201d and \u201cintense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel frightened,\u201d Mortensen said. \u201cEspecially the people living in Greenland, both adults but also youngsters and kids, and that was also a part of what their Greenlandic colleagues [were] expressing today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aaja Chemnitz, who is one of two Greenlandic representatives in the Danish Parliament, said that the \u201cuncertainty is really taking a toll\u201d on her people.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreenland is not for sale,\u201d Chemnitz said. \u201cSo what is on the table for the U.S. side right now is not interesting for us, and you can\u2019t buy a country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pipaluk Lynge, a member of the Greenlandic Parliament, traveled to Copenhagen to participate in the meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really important for us to tell them from our own voice, because we know how it is back home,\u201d Lynge said. \u201cThe children are worried, the adults are not sleeping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both sides stressed Denmark\u2019s willingness for more U.S. military presence in Greenland.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has one military base in the Arctic territory, which has formed a core part of missile early-warning systems dating back to the Cold War. The base, which houses a small number of troops compared to thousands at its peak, was transferred to the U.S. Space Force in 2019, during the first Trump administration.<\/p>\n

While the Trump administration\u2019s push to take Greenland has started to fray the decades-old alliance between the U.S. and Denmark, some are concerned about the broader impact on NATO if it moves to seize an ally\u2019s territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the United States were to carry out any of the current threats against Greenland, it would sever NATO,\u201d Coons told NBC News in an interview. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Danes are keenly aware of how the alliance between the two countries has seen sacrifices in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Afghanistan and Iraq, Danes were actually serving alongside the American soldiers, and Denmark lost, per capita, a lot of soldiers,\u201d Almind, the military veteran, said at the protest in Copenhagen. \u201cLooking back, you have to ask yourself, was it all worth it?\u201d<\/p>\n

While Danes are hopeful that the U.S. delegation\u2019s support will resonate once they return to Washington, some are skeptical they can convince the president to change his mind when he seems determined to acquire Greenland at any cost.<\/p>\n

Danish protester Else Hatmann said the delegation contained \u201conly two [Republicans] who Trump don\u2019t even listen to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murkowski, a frequent holdout who Trump earlier this month said \u201cshould never be elected to office again,\u201d<\/a> pushed back against that sentiment, saying, \u201cI don\u2019t think that the absence of Republicans is because they don\u2019t care about this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other Republican on the trip, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has become an outspoken critic of Trump <\/a>since he announced he would not run for re-election, but avoided interacting with reporters during the press events the delegation held.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COPENHAGEN, Denmark \u2014 On a cold, foggy afternoon in downtown Copenhagen, military veteran Flemming Almind joined thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-415268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}