| schema:text
| - On Jan. 7, Douglas Macgregor, a military TV analyst and political commentator, posted (archived) a claim on X that, according to reports, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump "has a deal worked up" to buy Greenland, an arctic island and autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark.
(X user @DougAMacgregor)
"BREAKING: Reports emerge that Trump has a deal worked up for the Purchase of Greenland..Developing.." Macgregor wrote. The post had more than 10 million views at the time of this writing.
Similar-sounding (archived) claims followed (archived). Back in December 2024 Eric Trump, Donald Trump's son, seemed to indicate that a deal could be imminent, posting (archived) an image of Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal in an Amazon-style checkout cart with the caption, "We are so back!!!" On Jan. 7, Donald Trump Jr., another of the president-elect's sons, flew to Nuuk for a day, concluding in an X post (archived): "Greenland loves America and Trump!!!"
However, we found no credible reports of a finalized, "worked up" deal for Trump's incoming administration to buy Greenland. We reached out to the Greenlandic government, the prime minister of which in December denied that the island was or ever would be for sale, to ask whether it had been offered a deal by the incoming Trump administration. We posed the same question to the Danish Ministry of State. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen posted a situation update on Facebook (archived) on Jan. 8 that did not include any mention of a deal offered to Greenland. We also asked the Trump transition team whether a deal had been prepared or offered. We will update this report if we get a response.
Absent credible reports of a deal featured in the claims above, we rate this claim as false.
The Danish Foreign Ministry did not comment directly when asked if it had received a deal to buy Greenland from the incoming Trump administration, instead referring Snopes to a Reuters article with statements from Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the Danish minister of foreign affairs. Rasmussen told reporters: "We fully recognize that Greenland has its own ambitions. If they materialize, Greenland will become independent, though hardly with an ambition to become a federal state in the United States."
This is not the first time the president-elect has laid wistful eyes on the world's largest island. In 2019, then-President Trump postponed a state visit to Denmark after Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called Trump's proposal to buy Greenland "absurd." A video clip from 2019 recirculated in January 2025 that showed Trump speaking about a proposed "large real estate deal" to buy Greenland. A Bloomberg opinion piece also appeared in related searches featuring speculation about what a U.S.-Greenland deal might look like, but not confirming or even suggesting the existence of one.
There is no suggestion that a Greenlandic government would be interested in a deal from the U.S., should an offer come. In December 2024, Múte B. Egede, the prime minister of Greenland, told Danish public broadcaster DR that: "Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale." This statement was similar to one made by the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2019, which posted: "We're open for business, not for sale." Egede repeated part of his December 2024 statement in a Jan. 6, 2025, Facebook post (archived), adding that: "Every day is spent on working to become independent."
In her Jan. 8 Facebook post, Frederiksen said that an increased American interest in the Arctic was generally positive. However, she added on the topic of Greenlandic independence:
I understand that this is a widespread desire in Greenland. And I would therefore like to reiterate that this is a decision that starts and ends in Nuuk. Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders, and as Múte B. Egede has said, it is the Greenlanders themselves who must define their future. At no time will Denmark work against that process.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)