No going back on Greenland grab: Trump torches Europe on way to Davos

The TOI correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump is heading out to Davos on Wednesday for the swish annual economic meet after torching European allies with leaked texts, memes, and incendiary rhetoric. The MAGA supremo has now doubled down on his demand for acquiring Greenland, sowing panic and discord in Europe, bringing the 76-year old Atlantic alliance close to collapse and leading some European leaders to characterise the United States as the new enemy ahead of Russia and China.

“As I expressed to everyone, very plainly, Greenland is imperative for national and world security. There can be no going back – — On that, everyone agrees! ” Trump posted on social media on Tuesday ahead of his trip to Davos, revealing that he had a “very good phone call with Mark Rutte, the secretary general of Nato, concerning Greenland, and had agreed to a meeting of the various parties to discuss the matter.





It was not clear who agreed with him since there is growing opposition within the US itself to the Greenland grab, except among his most hardcore MAGA supporters. Asked during a chat with reporters what he planned to say to European leaders when they push back on his Greenland plan, Trump said: “I don't think they're gonna push back too much. We have to have it. They have to have this done. They can't protect it. Denmark -- they're wonderful people, but they don't even go there.”

The MAGA supremo’s take-no-prisoners approach on Greenland came amid speculation among some military analysts that the Pentagon is preparing to deploy 1500 troops from the US Army’s elite 11th Airborne, which specialises in cold weather warfare, not to Minneapolis as publicly stated, but to Greenland. The aggressive push, backed by Trump aides like Stephen Miller, has alarmed European leaders. "All of my lifetime we've been told the Russians were coming...and were about to invade Europe. And as it turns out, it's the Americans that are coming," the former British MP George Galloway declared.

Trump allied social media accounts also posted memes showing the US president holding forth in the Oval Office with a map showing Canada and Greenland draped in US flag colors and a caption indicating they will become US territories in 2026.

Ahead of his trip to Davos, Trump softened up European leaders, disclosing private messages from a supplicating French President Emanuel Macron in which the latter pleaded for meeting. “My friend, we are totally in line on Syria. We can do great things on Iran. I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland. Let us try to build great things,” Macron implored in the text message, a screenshot of which Trump posted online. The French president also offered to set up a G-7 meeting in Paris after Davos and invited Trump to a dinner.

Compounding European embarrassment by publicly disclosing Macron’s entreaties, Trump also disdainfully dismissed reports that the French president had declined to join the Board of Peace he (Trump) has proposed, saying, “Nobody wants him… I’ll put a 200% tariff on his wines and he’ll join.” He added: "Nobody wants him because he'll be out of office very soon."

Pushback to Trump’s tariff-driven expansionism came not so much from a stunned, but still supplicating Europe, but from within the US.

“I am incoherent with astonishment. If the Congress will not impeach Trump, the Cabinet must invoke the 25th Amendment,” foreign policy analyst Daniel Pipes said in a post on X after the leaked messages that humiliated European leaders, including Trump’s texts to the Norwegian prime minister complaining about not getting the Nobel Prize. The 25th amendment allows replacement of a US president after death, resignation, removal, or incapacitation. And from Trump’s niece Mary Trump, a psychologist, a political commentator, and a critic of the president: “When I saw this letter, I literally thought, “This is too stupid even for him.” I should have known better.”

But the White House was unapologetic, with Trump aide Stephen Miller, taking an increasingly bigger role in foreign policy, going on air to argue that Denmark is not entitled to Greenland because it cannot defend the territory. The reasoning drove one Danish lawmaker apoplectic. “I hope he’s kept away from young women, because that’s the mentality of a rapist. You can’t defend yourself, so I’m going to take you. That’s basically what he’s saying.’ Danish parliamentarian Rasmus Jarlov said of the “might is right” doctrine.