Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede Rejects Trump’s Demand To Acquire Greenland ‘One Way Or The Other’

President Donald Trump expressed his desire to acquire Greenland again during his address to a joint Congress on Tuesday night, saying the U.S. will acquire the Danish territory “one way or the other.” Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede pushed back against Trump’s threat, saying that the Greenlandic people will determine their future and do not want to be Danes or Americans.

Last month, Trump called Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who was reportedly “aggressive and confrontational,” White House officials at the time told NBC News. He threatened tariffs against the country unless it did what he wanted, contradicting his promises about self-determination for Greenland.

In his address to Congress Tuesday night, Trump gave conflicting messages to the citizens of Greenland. While he claimed to “strongly support” Greenlanders’ “right to determine [their] own future” and promised to keep them safe and make them rich, the president also restated that the United States would succeed in acquiring the territory.

“We need it really for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump said.

The president said that his administration was “working with everybody involved to try to get it.”

Prime Minister Egede responded forcefully to Trump’s speech. “We do not want to be Americans, nor Danes; we are Kalaallit [Greenlanders]. The Americans and their leader must understand that,” Egede said in a Facebook post. “We are not for sale and cannot simply be taken. Our future will be decided by us in Greenland.”

Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, said earlier on Wednesday that it was significant that Trump had recognized Greenland’s right to self-determination in his address to Congress. Greenland’s current campaign ahead of the March 11 election is centered primarily on the island’s independence aspirations in light of Trump’s interest.

“[Trump] said (they) respect the right to Greenlandic self-determination, and that I think was the most important part of that speech,” the Danish foreign minister told a press conference in Helsinki on Wednesday.