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Donald Trump Isn’t the First President to Try to Buy Greenland
Incoming President Donald Trump is back on his quixotic plan to buy Greenland for the United States. But that’s not the first time the United States has expressed interest in buying the vast expanse of ice and tundra.
Trump’s most recent attempt to get the Denmark-owned self-governing territory is wrapped up in his announcement of Ken Howery as ambassador to Denmark. In 2019, Howery was named Trump’s ambassador to Sweden.
“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump said.
Trump’s interest in Greenland started during his first term, when billionaire and former Estée Lauder chairman Ronald Lauder suggested the president buy the territory. In August 2018, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) met with Danish ambassador Lars Gert Lose on Trump’s behalf to float the proposal. At the time Cotton said that Greenland was “vital to our national security,” according to TalkBusiness.
Denmark refused offers, with Denmark’s foreign policy chair calling it a “terrible and grotesque thought,” according to the New York Times. Indeed, the proposal was first reported on as one of Trump’s jokes.
The most recent attempt is just as unpopular with the Danes and the Greenlandic people.
“Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom,” Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede told Reuters.
As strange as it may seem, Trump is not the only president to try to get Greenland. Nor is the idea quite as baffling as it initially sounds. Though the territory is mostly covered in ice—with areas of pure ice—it has lots of mineral resources, including stores of uranium, coal, gold and rare earth metals, not to mention oil and gas.
Greenland is also well positioned politically. There are a number of American military bases in the territory, and it boasts frequent visits from diplomats and military officials. It was even called “the most strategic location in the Arctic and perhaps the world” by Walter Berbrick of the U.S. Naval War College, who has urged the United States to increase ties to Greenland—and even called the purchase of the territory a “strategic option” that “deserves serious consideration.”
The first time the U.S. thought about buying Greenland was in 1867 when Secretary of State William Seward, under President Andrew Johnson, proposed buying it and Iceland from Denmark for $5.5 million in gold, or about $117.2 million in today’s money. The offer was never made to Denmark however. That same year, Seward negotiated the Alaska Purchase from Russia for $7.2 million ($129 million today).
In 1946, President Harry Truman’s Secretary of State Owen Brewster tried again. He offered $100 million (or about $1 billion in today’s money) in gold bullion. While the offer was popular in the American government, Denmark balked. The main reason cited was that Danes saw Greenland as part of Denmark’s cultural identity and a connection to the country’s history as Vikings, according to The Conversation.
That refusal appeared to settle things. America was happy to merely work with Denmark and Greenland without actually owning it until Trump stepped in. It remains unlikely that Denmark will ever sell—in fact, Greenlandic independence appears to be a surer bet. But one can only assume that Trump won’t stop trying.
Image via Shutterstock
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
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One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
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