Inside the secret Trump plan to 'take over the world's largest island'

U.S. President Donald Trump attends an event at Custer Farms in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, U.S., June, 5, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

President Donald Trump has been secretly planning to seize Greenland, the world’s largest island, even though it is owned by Denmark and an overwhelming majority of its citizens do not want to be owned by the United States.

Describing an ongoing ambition that traces back to his first term, The New Yorker’s Ben Taub reported on Monday that a quartet of Trump loyalists have continued to push to annex Greenland even after large majorities of Americans pushed back against the idea last year. These include Chris Cox, who founded Bikers for Trump in 2015 and participated in Trump’s attempted coup after he lost the 2020 presidential election. Taub described Cox attempting to push Trump’s case to Greenlanders who mostly reacted with hostility, especially when he told an Italian TV channel that “without knowing it, a lot of the Greenlanders are living in the Stone Age.”

As Cox put it, “I’m receiving a lot of death threats as a result of my work here in Greenland. People are looking at me like I’m a Russian with a machine gun right now, when they see the Trump patch.” He dismissed the fact that Greenlanders began wearing “Make America Go Away” hats at large, instead telling the Washington Times that he was succeeding in his mission “to change the hearts of some of these Greenlanders.”

Cox is not alone in working for Trump to take Greenland from Greenlanders.

“Along with Cox, the Danish government has identified two other Americans as running private ‘influence operations’ in Greenland: a former venture capitalist and pecan farmer named Tom Dans and a former Army Special Forces commander named Drew Horn, who has sought to dominate Greenland’s rare-earth-mining sector,” Taub reported. “Both men served in Trump’s first Administration—Dans at the Treasury, Horn in the Office of the Vice-President, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Departments of Energy and Defense. But the Danish and Greenlandic governments were unaware that, during Trump’s first term, they had also represented their respective agencies on a secret National Security Council task force whose focus was the acquisition of Greenland.”

Taub added that there is “a fourth man, Jørgen Boassen, is one of the very few Greenlanders who loudly support Trump; he spent much of the past year in self-imposed exile, floating between far-right American and European political gatherings, his travel and living expenses covered by American benefactors whom he refuses to identify. And then there is Trump himself, whose stated reasons for coveting Greenland do not stand up to scrutiny—except that he considers it ‘psychologically important,’ as he recently put it to the New York Times, to own the territory rather than merely have military access to it, as the U.S. has had continuously, under a treaty with Denmark, since 1951.”

Taub also described Trump’s attempts to win over Greenland by appointing Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA) as his special envoy to Greenland. Landry controversially attempted to send Greenlanders to America for health care on a boat based on right-wing propaganda, and was publicly miffed when Greenland Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen responded that they “have a public health-care system where treatment is free for citizens. Please talk to us instead of just making more or less random statements on social media.”

“Shame on Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen!” Landry replied in a post on X. “President @realDonaldTrump and America care.”

One day after Landry left, the US opened a new consulate in the center of Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, while “American officials and businessmen ate musk-ox hot dogs and discussed their ambitions for Greenland’s future” and “hundreds of Greenlanders protested outside.” Taub quoted Greenland politician Rasmus Jarlov, who recently ended his term in parliament.

“It is utterly insane that we allow their presence,” Jarlov wrote on X. “The new, very large American consulate in Nuuk has one clear mission and task, and that is to pave the way for an American takeover.”

He added, “The only thing that has worked was when we, along with our allies, made it clear that we would rather go to war with the United States than let them have Greenland.”

Describing Taub’s story for their newsletter, journalist David Remnick said that "Taub reports on the secret plan to take over the world’s largest island." He also reported that “these men represent the vanguard of a ludicrous—and deadly serious—plan that has threatened foundational transatlantic agreements, escalated into military maneuvers among allies, and provided further evidence at home and abroad that American foreign policy depends entirely on the whims of the President.” The New Yorker story comes on the heels of a Politico report earlier this month that Trump’s efforts suffered a setback with the reelection of Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who staunchly opposes Trump’s ambitions.

"The four-party coalition is expected to bring together Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, the Moderates, Green Left and the Social Liberals, according to the DR public broadcaster," Politico wrote. "The incoming PM met King Frederik X Monday evening to inform him."

“I think everyone will be surprised by how much we want to do. It is a government platform that is good both for the people in Denmark, for the generations to come, and for animals,” Frederiksen said in a statement.

In February, America’s European allies began to separate their financial and national data away from America to attain “monetary sovereignty” and “digital sovereignty” as a way to reduce America’s influence on their continent. This move was largely inspired by the “Greenland moment,” or the realization last year that America could declare war on European nations despite being ostensibly at peace with them.

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