President Donald Trump has sparked fury after a 2019 promise he made to Greenland resurfaced in an old tweet.
On August 19, 2019, the Republican posted a photo of a Greenland town edited to have a shining gold Trump hotel sitting along the water’s edge.
He captioned it: ‘I promise not to do this to Greenland!’
That vow looks a lot different than the current state of affairs between the Trump Administration and Greenland officials as the Republican leader is attempting to buy the Denmark-owned country.
Conversations have been terse as Danish officials said the Arctic country does not want to become part of America.
Trump has threatened tariffs against the 56,000 Innuits that live there if they don’t support his acquisition.
Now, his resurfaced tweet has caused waves amongst his homeland detractors, who do not like that the president broke his own public promise.
‘There’s always a tweet,’ Claude Taylor, a former White House staffer who worked under Bill Clinton, wrote on X.
President Donald Trump posted a photo in 2019 of a Greenland town edited to have a Trump hotel in it
He captioned the August 2019 post: ‘I promise not to do this to Greenland!’
Another wrote, alongside a clown emoji: ‘He is well-known to keep his promises.’
A third wrote: ‘Bro has the worst digital footprint.’
Another agreed, writing: ‘The internet doesn’t forget and that’s the beauty of it all.’
The 2019 tweet came after Trump had announced during his first term that he was considering buying Greenland for strategic reasons, despite Greenland’s insistence that it was not for sale.
‘Essentially, it’s a large real estate deal,’ Trump said at the time. ‘A lot of things can be done. It’s hurting Denmark very badly, because they’re losing almost $700million a year carrying it. So they carry it at a great loss.’
The US military has operated for decades from Thule Air Base in Greenland, which is situated between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
The northern-most US base is part of the military’s global network of radars and other sensors to provide ballistic missile warning and space surveillance.
Now, Trump claimed he wants the Arctic island for ‘national security’ purposes, although he has not specified more than that.
Trump’s wish to acquire Greenland has caused detraction on both sides of the Atlantic, with Americans criticizing his ability to hold a promise he made in 2019
Kremlin officials criticized Trump’s ideas and said Russia considered Greenland to be Denmark’s territory.
Presidential press secretary and spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: ‘The situation is unusual, I would even say extraordinary from the standpoint of international law,’ as reported by Russian state news outlet Ria Novosti.
He added: ‘On the other hand, given that President Trump is in Washington, he himself has said that international law is not a priority for him.
The press secretary said Russia would be watching alongside the rest of the world to see which ‘trajectory’ the situation goes.
Moscow said this week that its was unacceptable for the West to keep claiming that Russia and China threatened Greenland, and said that the crisis over the territory showed the double standards of Western powers which claimed moral superiority.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the current situation ‘demonstrates with particular acuteness the inconsistency of the so-called “rules-based world order” being built by the West.’
She said: ‘First they came up with the idea that there were some aggressors, and then that they were ready to protect someone from these aggressors.’
This comes as Greenland and Denmark’s foreign ministers held talks on Wednesday with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, amid threats by US President Donald Trump to take control of the island.
Trump said he wants Greenland (pictured) for ‘national security’ purposes. The US currently operates an Air Force base there
The meeting with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt reportedly ended with a ‘fundamental disagreement.’
Rasmussen acknowledged that ‘we didn’t manage to change the American position’ but said he hadn’t expected to.
President Trump has been insistent on seizing Greenland and has not ruled out taking it by force – although Republicans see that scenario as unlikely.
The 79-year-old has also warned the US may pull out of NATO if America’s allies don’t agree to the acquisition of Greenland.
‘We’re going to see. NATO has been dealing with us on Greenland, we need Greenland for national security very badly. If we don’t have it we have a very big hole in terms of national security, especially in terms of the Golden Dome,’ Trump warned.
The Golden Dome is a proposed multi-layer missile defense system which the president says is reliant on seizing control of Denmark’s Arctic territory.
Republican Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska claims a US invasion of the Arctic island might go too far and could prompt his party to launch a third impeachment against the two-term president.
He acknowledged that while the president doesn’t like ‘being told no,’ he might need to accept it in this case, according to the Omaha World-Herald.
Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said the island chooses to remain part of Denmark
The lawmaker who is not seeking reelection in the fall said that many in the Republican Party are angry with Trump’s escalated rhetoric towards Greenland and his refusal to rule out using the military to take the Danish territory.
‘I’ll be candid with you: There’s so many Republicans mad about this,’ Bacon said on Wednesday. ‘If he went through with the threats, I think it would be the end of his presidency.’
‘He needs to know: The off-ramp is realizing Republicans aren’t going to tolerate this and he’s going to have to back off. He hates being told no, but in this case, I think Republicans need to be firm,’ Bacon insisted.
Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled House twice during his first term, but was acquitted both times by the Senate.
