President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday he will meet with “various parties” to discuss Greenland in Davos, Switzerland Wednesday. In a Truth Social post, Trump said he called the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte to set up the meeting.
“I expressed to everyone, very plainly, Greenland is imperative for National and World Security,” Trump wrote. “There can be no going back — On that, everyone agrees!”
Hours later, Trump leaked a text message from French President Emmanuel Macron in an atypical breach of diplomatic discretion. The message expressed further concerns over Greenland and an invitation to discuss the matter further after Trump’s Davos meeting.
“I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland,” the text, which was confirmed by a Macron official, said. “I can set up a G7 meeting after Davos in Paris on Thursday afternoon.” The text also invited Trump to dinner and said “let us try to build great things.”
Macron spoke out against Trump’s Greenland actions on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He said France, and Europe at-large, will not “passively accept the law of the strongest,” and “We do prefer respect to bullies and we do prefer rule of law to brutality.”
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Trump’s posts follow the Saturday announcement to levy a 10 percent tax on eight European countries for having “journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown” and generally protesting Trump’s plans for the Arctic region.
Thousands marched in Greenland on Saturday protesting the potential U.S. takeover, chanting “Greenland is not for sale.” The Associated Press reported the protest, which took place in Greenland’s capital city Nuuk, may be the largest in the island’s history.
“This is a fight for freedom,” Tillie Martinussen, a former member of Greenland’s parliament, told the AP at the protest. “It’s for NATO, it’s for everything the Western Hemisphere has been fighting for since World War II.”
