Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is calling President Trump’s bluff on his threats to gain control of Greenland.
Gingrich cast doubts on the president’s comments, although the retired legislator acknowledged he “could be wrong,” he told John Catsimatidis in a radio interview on “The Cats Roundtable” show airing Sunday.
“I think he’s making a lot of noise to set up a negotiation to get what he wants, which is tourist rights, economic rights, mineral rights and national security rights,” Gingrich said.
The former Speaker noted the Danish territory’s wealth of natural resources and the interests of China, Russia and the U.S. in gaining access to Greenland’s minerals and oil and gas supplies.
“It’s a huge economic opportunity,” he said.
His comments come as a bipartisan group of U.S. legislators is on a trip to Denmark to meet with Danish leaders on this issue. Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are the two Republicans on the visit.
Tillis said military intervention to take over the country “would be met with pretty substantial opposition in Congress.”
“Right now, people are trying to be deferential, but this is just an example of, whoever keeps on telling the president that this idea is achievable should not be in Washington, D.C.,” he said prior to the trip.
Trump said Saturday he would levy 10 percent tariffs on Denmark and several other European nations because of their opposition to his plans for Greenland.
In a Truth Social post announcing this decision, he said this import tax could be increased to 25 percent if a deal for the U.S. to purchase Greenland is not brokered by June 1.
Danish leaders have lambasted these suggested tariffs, with Danish Chamber of Commerce CEO Brian Mikkelsen saying, “Trump’s farce continues.”
“The American president is once again using tariffs as a threat,” Mikkelsen wrote in a translated post on the social platform X. “As so many times before, it is damaging to confidence in world trade and damaging to the American and European economies.”
Gingrich also pointed to weaknesses in the European economy as a reason for Trump’s ability to apply pressure in the region, specifically identifying European countries’ decision to shift to a regulatory economic model “rather than innovation.”
“[The U.S.] made the opposite decision,” Gingrich said. “We decided we wanted to maximize innovation and then regulate lightly but not have enough regulation to crush what we were doing. That has been a disastrous decision for the Europeans.”
