Trump eyes new leverage in the hopes of advancing his Greenland crusade

Six months ago, Donald Trump said he’d agreed to a new “framework” with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on the future of Greenland, which was apparently designed to satisfy the American president’s demands. There were all kinds of questions about whether that agreement actually existed, but as the year got underway, that was Trump’s story and he stuck to it.

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On Jan. 22, a reporter pressed the Republican to offer any details regarding the deal he had announced days earlier. “We’ll have something in two weeks,” he replied.

The notorious “two weeks” line should have been a big hint that Trump was just making stuff up as he went along, and the White House never released any additional information about the “framework.”

In the weeks and months that followed, he tended to shift his attention to different distractions, trivialities and preoccupations (the ballroom, the Reflecting Pool, the “triumphant” arch, the UFC bout, et al.), though for reasons unknown, the Republican’s Greenland fixation has made an unfortunate comeback just in time to generate avoidable and unnecessary tensions between the U.S. and its allies at the latest NATO summit.

Indeed, earlier this week in Turkey, Trump said that not only should Greenland be under U.S. control, he added that NATO’s reluctance to simply give him the Arctic island had “hurt” his relationship with the alliance. A day later, he went on to argue, “We took Greenland and then, stupidly, we gave it back. We shouldn’t have given it back to them, because we’re the ones that need it.”

On the flight back to the U.S., the president added a new element to the discussion.

Amid recent reporting on the administration’s plans for possible changes to U.S. troop levels stationed in Europe, a reporter asked Trump whether he intends to take additional steps.