A couple of months into Donald Trump’s second term, the White House dispatched an uninvited delegation to Greenland as part of an apparent charm offensive. Vice President JD Vance, his wife and his colleagues hoped their visit to the island — which the president had said he was determined to acquire — would make a good opening impression with locals.
That did not work, and officials in Greenland (and much of the public) made a series of efforts to demonstrate that they did not want the U.S. delegation there. Trump nevertheless declared soon after, “We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%.”
The Republican added that there was a “good possibility that we could do it without military force,” but he went on to say that he wasn’t going to “take anything off the table.”
Almost a year later, the administration continues to insist on its radical vision. The New York Times reported:
Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, asserted on Monday that Greenland rightfully belonged to the United States and that the Trump administration could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory if it wanted.
‘Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,’ Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper, the CNN host, after being asked repeatedly whether he would rule out using military force.
According to CNN’s transcript, the full context of Miller’s quote was, “The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. There’s no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you’re asking, of a military operation. Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”
In the same interview, Miller (sounding a bit like Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men,” or maybe the villain in a dime-store comic) said, “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
Those looking to understand the foundation of a Trump Doctrine would do worse than starting with these two sentences.
The phrase that stood out to me, however, was “should have.” In other words, according to one of the most powerful and influential figures in the Trump White House, the United States is entitled to Greenland.
The day before Miller’s on-air comments, the president emphasized his belief that the U.S. needs to acquire Greenland “from a national security situation,” and the day after Miller’s appearance, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, the White House’s odd choice for a special envoy to Greenland, appeared on CNBC and refused to rule out the possibility of a U.S. takeover of the Arctic island.
The Republican governor added that the Trump administration believes in “solidifying the Western Hemisphere … and Greenland is in the Western Hemisphere.” Landry did not elaborate on what “solidifying” means in this context. For all of the recent White House talk about the Monroe Doctrine, it seems that a different 19th century concept — Manifest Destiny — deserves to be part of the same conversation. But instead of advocating the expansion of the United States to the Pacific Ocean, Team Trump appears to be operating under the assumption that we’re destined to control the entire hemisphere. Our longtime allies appear unimpressed. The U.S. faced a rare rebuke at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday. A day later, major European allies warned the United States that they would “not stop defending” the values of sovereignty and territorial integrity, in direct response to the White House threats against Greenland. If Team Trump’s goal was to further isolate the United States for no reason, it’s succeeding beautifully.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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