Trump weighs using U.S. military to acquire Greenland: White House

President Donald Trump and his team are considering “a range of options” in order to acquire Greenland, including “utilizing the U.S. Military,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNBC on Tuesday.

The statement is an escalation of the Trump administration’s already aggressive rhetoric about Greenland, which the president has long sought to make a part of the United States.

Trump said Sunday that the U.S. needs Greenland for national security purposes, pointing to Russian and Chinese activities in the region near the Arctic island.

Greenland is a territory of Denmark, which, like the U.S., is a member of international military alliance the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The leaders of Denmark and other European NATO states on Tuesday morning issued a joint statement pushing back on Trump’s increasingly vocal desire to obtain Greenland.

Leavitt’s new comment on Greenland came after that joint statement was issued.

“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region,” Leavitt said.

“The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. Military is always an option at the Commander in Chief’s disposal,” she said.

Trump has spoken frequently about absorbing both Greenland and Canada into the U.S., as well as the Panama Canal. The controversial comments have drawn international rebukes, though they were dismissed by some as unserious and unlikely to materialize in U.S. foreign policy.

The president’s renewed discussion of Greenland has prompted more serious concerns in recent days, after the U.S. military entered Venezuela and successfully captured that country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores.

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