(LONDON) — President Donald Trump said the U.S. will “go as far as we have to go” to get control of Greenland, ahead of a planned visit to the Arctic island by Vice President JD Vance that has prompted criticism from Greenland and Denmark.
Vance, second lady Usha Vance and Energy Secretary Chris Wright will lead the U.S. delegation to visit the Pituffik military space base in the northwest of the island, having scaled back plans for a broader and longer visit. The American group was originally planning to visit the Greenlandic capital, Nuuk, and a dog sled race.
Trump showed no indication of softening his ambition to take control of the island, which is an autonomous territory but part of the Kingdom of Denmark.
“We need Greenland for national security and international security,” Trump said, taking reporters’ questions in the Oval Office.
“So we’ll, I think, we’ll go as far as we have to go,” he continued. “We need Greenland. And the world needs us to have Greenland, including Denmark. Denmark has to have us have Greenland. And, you know, we’ll see what happens. But if we don’t have Greenland, we can’t have great international security.”
Trump added, “I view it from a security standpoint, we have to be there.”
Trump also said that he understood “JD might be going,” referring to the vice president, but did not offer any details about the trip. Vance is expected to travel to Greenland on Friday.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede earlier this week called the upcoming visit by U.S. officials part of a “very aggressive American pressure against the Greenlandic community” and called for the international community to rebuke it.
After the U.S. announced that the visit would be pared back to only include the Pituffik base, Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the decision was “wise.”
Trump has repeatedly — in both his first and second terms — raised the prospect of the U.S. obtaining Greenland, whether through purchase or other means. During his March speech to a joint session of Congress, Trump said the U.S. would acquire the strategic territory “one way or the other.”
Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Bourup Egede dismissed Trump’s remarks. “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders,” he wrote on social media.
“We are not Americans, we are not Danes because we are Greenlanders. This is what the Americans and their leaders need to understand, we cannot be bought and we cannot be ignored.”
ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
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