Nancy Pelosi Hits Trump With Brutal Reality Check On His Greenland Takeover Plan

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday poked fun at President Donald Trump’s plans to acquire Greenland, referencing the unpopularity of his suggestion among the people who live on the island.

“I think that more people think that Elvis Presley is alive in the United States than Greenlanders who think they want to be part of the United States,” Pelosi told Politico’s Securing Europe: NATO’s Next Steps Event.

Indeed, his push for annexing the island seems wildly unpopular with Greenlanders. Just 6% said they supported the idea of becoming part of the U.S., according to a poll published in late January.

Despite the discouraging numbers, Trump, who has repeatedly made his desire to annex the semi-autonomous Danish territory known, said he would not rule out taking the island by force.

“I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker this weekend. “We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very small amount of people, which we’ll take care of, and we’ll cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security.”

The Trump administration seems to be already taking steps to realize the president’s goal. High-ranking officials working for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to step up their spying of the island, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

In response to the article, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he would call the acting U.S. ambassador to Denmark to review the report’s contents, which he described as “disturbing.”

“We do not spy on friends,” Rasmussen said, according to Reuters.

Denmark, along with the U.S., are of the 12 founding members of the NATO military alliance.

Asked if the European Union and NATO can still count on the U.S. as a “reliable partner,” Pelosi said: I “absolutely hope so.”

“I think it’s essential to global security that the United States be an essential part of it,” Pelosi added.

Despite past comments by the president questioning his commitment to NATO, the California Democrat expressed optimism that the U.S. would honor the alliance’s mutual assistance clause, just as its fellow members did after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Notably, this was the only time that NATO’s mutual assistance clause has ever been triggered.

Pelosi also warned of the dire consequences that would follow if the U.S. abandoned its NATO allies.

“I do think that if we as the United States of America do not honor our commitments,” she said, “I don’t know how we expect people to honor their commitments to us.”

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