Trump sends allies into meltdown with leaked private texts and Greenland flag meme as world row explodes: Live updates

Donald Trump posted a text message from President Emmanuel Macron on Truth Social late Monday.

The French leader told Trump, ‘I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.’

Macron also explained some of his differences and similarities to Trump on policy.

‘My friend, we are totally in line on Syria. We can do great things on Iran,’ Macron wrote. ‘I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland. Let us try to build great things.’

In the text, Macron promised to assemble a G7 following the World Economic Forum in Davos and asked Trump to have dinner with him in Paris on Thursday before he returns to the US.

United States Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent was overheard reassuring European allies at Davos as Trump threatened to impose tariffs on those countries who opposed his purchase of Greenland.

‘Take a deep breath. Do not retaliate. Do not retaliate,’ he said.

‘The president will be here tomorrow, and he will get his message across. I believe he is going to have meetings and again, also have an open mind.’

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said 10 percent tariffs would come into effect on February ‍1 on Denmark, Norway, ​Sweden, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Finland.

They would increase to 25 percent on June 1 unless a deal is reached for the US to take ‘complete and total purchase’ of the Arctic territory.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted that Donald Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland is unrelated to him being denied the Nobel Peace Prize.

‘I think it’s a complete canard, and if there’s any kind of equivalence with the Nobel Prize,’ he told CNBC.

‘This has been on the president’s mind since his first term. It’s been on the presidential mind for 150, 160 years the US has been trying to acquire Greenland. This is not something new.’

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that Greenland is ‘strategically important’ for Donald Trump’s Golden Dome defense plan.

‘It’s strategically important for his Golden Dome project to protect the US. He’s invited Canada into that if they want to pay their fair share,’ she said.

‘It’s important the US has control of Greenland and that will stop and kind of a kinetic war. So why not preempt the problem before it starts?’

President Trump’s renewed tariff threat against Europe puts into sharp relief two questions that matter more than any single trade dispute: how the president and his team are doing at remaking America’s standing in the world, and whether they are actually succeeding at reinvigorating the US economy.

Those twin missions rest, more than anywhere else, on the shoulders of two men: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

By some combination of luck, design and political survival instinct, Rubio and Bessent have emerged as the two most broadly respected senior advisers in the Trump orbit.

They are widely viewed — across Wall Street, foreign capitals, television green rooms, Capitol Hill and elite opinion-shaping circles — as smart, serious, qualified and genuinely accomplished.

That may sound obvious, but it is not trivial. The same adjectives would not be applied, in too many cases, to several other cabinet officials, whose reputations are more ideological, performative or controversial. Vice President JD Vance is a separate and sui generis case, one I’ll save for another day.

When President Donald Trump revived the idea that Greenland should become part of the United States, predictable snickering followed.

His critics insist that the White House‘s designs on the ‘Land of Ice and Snow’ is some newfangled aberration.

Yet despite the late-night jokes, there is a serious argument for America’s annexation of Greenland that is rooted in history, geography and 150 years of US strategic security thinking.

American leaders have long eyed Greenland, not as a whimsical real-estate dream, but as a vital asset for national defense and global influence.

Sporting a pair of aviator sunglasses, the French president told the ⁠World Economic Forum in Davos on ​Tuesday: ‘It’s… ‍a ​shift towards a world without rules, where international law ‍is ‍trampled underfoot and where the only law that seems ⁠to matter is that of ⁠the strongest’, adding that what he called ‘imperial ‍ambitions’ were resurfacing.

Red baseball caps similar to Trump’s Make America Great Again hats are becoming a symbol of Danish and Greenlandic protest as the president ramps up efforts to acquire the arctic region.

The hats, created by Copenhagen vintage clothing store owner Jesper Rabe Tonnesen, feature the slogan ‘Make America Go Away’ have gained popularity as protestors against Trump have donned them at recent demonstrations.

Although the first release of the caps in 2024 flopped in sales, Tonnesen said he saw a surge in orders after Trump’s rhetoric to seize the territory ramped up.

‘When a delegation from America went up to Greenland, we started to realise this probably wasn’t a joke – it’s not reality TV, it’s actually reality,’ said Tonnesen.

‘So I said, “OK, what can I do?” Can I communicate in a funny way with a good message and unite the Danes to show that Danish people support the people of Greenland?’

The hats also feature the Danish phrase ‘Nu det NUUK!’, a twist on the Danish phrase ‘Nu det nok,’ meaning ‘Now it’s enough.’

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asserted that there are no plans to capture Greenland at a press conference on Tuesday.

‘We have no plans to capture Greenland. It’s not our issue. We think Washington knows well about the absence of such plans both in Russia and China,’ Lavrov said.

He also denied any intentions by Russia and China to threaten Greenland, as Donald Trump has suggested.

‘When they justify what’s going on around Greenland by saying that otherwise Russia or China would seize it, there is no proof of that. And in the West, economists and political scientists are already refuting them,’ he said.

‘We have nothing to do with this issue. We will monitor the situation.’

It began seemingly as a joke. Then a provocation.

Now, the idea of America capturing Greenland is being seriously discussed inside the White House.

This time, President Donald Trump and his advisers are not ruling out the use of American military force against a NATO ally, if the island is not for sale.

On Tuesday, the White House confirmed that Trump is weighing ‘options’ for acquiring the vast Arctic island, calling it a US national security priority needed to ‘deter our adversaries in the Arctic region.’

Denmark deployed more than 100 troops to Greenland on Monday as President Donald Trump ramped up efforts to acquire the territory.

The Danish Armed Forces said that the soldier deployment was a ‘substantial contribution’ for the defense of Greenland and that Trump’s involvement did not have any bearing on the decision.

‘My focus is not toward the US, not at all. My focus is on Russia,’ Maj. Gen. Søren Andersen, Denmark’s top military commander, told Reuters last week.

The soldiers are positione in the capital city of Nuuk and in the town of Kangerlussuaq, located in western Greenland.

Donald Trump trolled European leaders with an AI image of them looking at a map showing Greenland and Canada as US territory in the Oval Office.

The photo, posted on his Truth Social platform Monday night, shows leaders including Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni gathered around Trump’s desk.

The altered image appears to be an edited version of a photograph taken during August 2025, when European leaders visited Washington for the US President’s phone call with Vladimir Putin.

In the original version of the image, the leaders are gathered near a whiteboard, showing a map depicting the front line of the Ukraine conflict.

In the altered one, the presentation board has been edited so that a US flag covers North America, Canada and Greenland.