President Donald Trump and his team are considering a “wide range of options” to acquire Greenland, including “the use of the U.S. military,” White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt told CNBC on Tuesday.
The statement further escalates the Trump administration’s already aggressive rhetoric toward Greenland, which the president has long sought to make part of the United States.
President Trump said Sunday that the United States needs the Arctic islands for national security purposes, pointing to Russian and Chinese activities in the region.
Greenland is a territory of Denmark, and Denmark, like the United States, is a member of the NATO international military alliance.
Leaders of Denmark and other European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries issued a joint statement Tuesday morning, pushing back on President Trump’s increasingly vocal desire to acquire Greenland.
“Greenland belongs to its people. Denmark and Greenland, and they alone, decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” the statement said.
Levitt’s new comments on Greenland came after the release of the joint statement.
View from a drone shows a general view of Nuuk, Greenland, March 14, 2025.
Marco Julica | Reuters
“President Trump has made it clear that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority for the United States and that deterring adversaries in the Arctic is critical,” Levitt said in an emailed statement.
“The President and his team are discussing a wide range of options for pursuing this important foreign policy objective, and of course the use of the U.S. military is always an option at the discretion of the commander in chief,” she said.
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing Monday that the administration’s goal is to buy Greenland from Denmark, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday afternoon.
President Trump has frequently talked about absorbing both Greenland and Canada into the United States, as well as the Panama Canal. The controversial comments drew international condemnation, with some dismissing them as unserious and unlikely to materialize in U.S. foreign policy.
More serious concerns have been raised in recent days by the president’s renewed discussion of Greenland after the U.S. military invaded Venezuela and successfully captured the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Syria Flores.
After the operation, President Trump said, “I will continue to run the country until a safe, appropriate and wise transition of power can occur.”
President Trump also said that U.S. oil companies would enter Venezuela to “fix” the country’s energy infrastructure and that those companies would be “compensated” for their efforts.
President Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday morning that he would leave it to others to decide what intervening in Venezuela would mean for Greenland.
“He’s lost his mind,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, said on CNBC when asked about President Trump’s threat to Greenland.
“I think he needs to be taken seriously because he does outrageous things,” McGovern added.
White House senior adviser Stephen Miller said in a CNN interview on Monday that the United States “should make Greenland part of the United States.”
Miller also did not rule out the possibility of seizing the island by force, but insisted that such a question was moot. “No one will fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” he said.
But Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday that NATO countries “obviously” must protect Greenland from the United States if necessary.
“That’s what Article 5 says. Article 5 did not envisage the aggressor becoming a NATO member,” Murphy said. “We’re laughing, but I think he’s getting more and more serious, so this isn’t really something to laugh about.”
On Tuesday, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) announced he would introduce a resolution to Congress to block President Trump’s invasion of Greenland.
“Wake up. President Trump is telling us exactly what he wants to do,” Gallego said in the X post. “We have to stop him before he invades other countries on a whim.”
—CNBC’s Justin Papp contributed to this report.
