Vance joins Greenland tour as Trump says of island: 'We need it'

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — First it was Donald Trump Jr announcing he was “coming in hot” to Greenland weeks after his father said the U.S. would annex the world’s biggest island. Now Vice President JD Vance is joining a trip there because he doesn’t want his wife “to have all that fun by herself.”

A planned trip this week to the Danish territory was causing all kinds of consternation about the true nature of the visit, which was originally presented as family excursion that included watching a national dog sled race but was actually a sizable U.S. delegation. No one was buying it.

The result is that aspects of the trip have been scaled down — nationalsecurity adviser Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright were dropped and so were the dogs. But the addition of Trump’s deputy raises the profile of the visit by making him the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Greenland.

President Donald Trump initially came in to defend the U.S.’s intentions, saying it was about “friendliness, not provocation.” Today he’s cleared up any lingering ambiguity about the mission.

“We need it. We have to have it,” Trump said on a conservative talk show. “And it’s a island that from a defensive posture, and even offensive posture, is something we need, especially with the world the way it is, and we’re going to have to have it.”

When asked whether Greenlanders would be amenable, Trump said: “I don’t know. I don’t think they’re un-eager, but I think that we have to do it, and we have to convince them.”

Even before Trump’s clarifying comments on Wednesday, Nordic officials had expressed unease. Denmark called it “unacceptable pressure.” The winner of Greenland’s elections said it was disrespectful.

Trump has for months insisted the U.S. needs control over Greenland for national security purposes, triggering a diplomatic crisis with Copenhagen.

The Vance are due to visit the U.S.’s isolated military base in the far northwest of the Danish semi-autonomous island on Friday, where they will be briefed on Arctic security issues and meet with U.S. service members. Stops in populated areas Nuuk and Sisimiut, where locals had warned of anti-U.S. demonstrations were scrapped.

The presence of the U.S. second in command, one who has flexed his muscle on foreign affairs more than “veeps” tend to, sends a message.

“I’m going to visit some of our guardians in the space force on the northwest coast of Greenland, and also just check out what’s going on with the security there of Greenland,” he said in a video posted on X. “Unfortunately, leaders in both America and in Denmark I think ignored Greenland for far too long.”

He made no explicit mention of Trump’s designs on the territory. Though that was made clear by his eldest son back in January: “Greenland is an incredible place, and the people will benefit tremendously if, and when, it becomes part of our nation.”

The revised schedule may be enough to allow both Washington and Copenhagen to claim a public-relations win, with Danish foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen having welcomed the move.

“I think it’s very positive that the Americans cancel their visit to the Greenlandic society,” he told broadcaster DR. “Instead, they’re visiting their own base, Pituffik, and we have nothing against that.”

In Greenland, too, the changed plans will be “a relief for many people,” Masaana Egede, the head of local media Sermitsiaq, said in his newspaper. Denmark has already dispatched dozens of police officers to Greenland to help handle the security around the visit.

Trump first put forward the idea of buying Greenland in 2019, during his first term as president. In January, his son jetted in on his family’s Boeing 757 for a surprise five-hour visit to the island.

Then-Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken visited Greenland in May 2021 after the U.S. re-established its consulate in Nuuk a year earlier.

The base the Vances will visit has a history of tension between Denmark, Greenland and the U.S.

In 1968, a U.S. B-52 aircraft carrying four nuclear bombs crashed close to the base, spreading radio-active waste. Denmark’s government hadn’t officially allowed the U.S. to bring nuclear weapons to the territory and the event caused a domestic scandal. The hundreds of Danes and Greenlanders assigned to clean up the contaminated ice and snow later filed for damages, saying they hadn’t been sufficiently warned about radiation risks.

Further back, in the 1950s when Denmark helped the U.S. build the base, some 30 Inuit families were forcefully removed from their settlement. They sued the Danish government for the loss of their hunting grounds without initial success, but finally received compensation after a Supreme Court ruling in 2003.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has tried to manage Trump’s outsized interest in the territory, especially after a difficult conversation in January where he said he was serious about taking the Arctic island one way or another.

Last month she said that Denmark is ready to allow the U.S. to boost its presence in Greenland, citing the importance of defense and security in the Arctic region.

Greenland’s political parties are in talks to form a coalition following a general election earlier this month, which saw Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s Demokraatit come out as the election winner, making him the likely incoming premier of the territory.

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With assistance from Jordan Fabian.