Trump is sounding more and more like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney:
“I think the people want to be with us,” Trump said when asked about the island in the press room on board the presidential plane.
“I don’t really know what claim Denmark has to it, but it would be a very unfriendly act if they didn’t allow that to happen because it’s for the protection of the free world [bold mine-DL],” he added.
“I think Greenland we’ll get because it has to do with freedom of the world,” Trump continued.
It goes without saying that trying to take over someone else’s country against the wishes of the inhabitants has nothing to do with freedom. The people of Greenland have no desire to be part of Trump’s Greater United States, as their own leaders have said many times. When an American leader declares that the people of another country will welcome our domination of their land (“we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators”), that is usually a prelude to an act of aggression. American nationalists can’t imagine that other nations don’t want to be Americans, and they assume that that the U.S. is doing the others a favor by annexing or attacking them.