Donald Trump's flirtation with wanting to take over Greenland has plunged the popularity of the U.S. to a new low among locals and in Denmark.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Trump's overtures to Denmark to assume possession of the protectorate was greeted with dismay and diminished goodwill built up over decades between the two countries.
In the first few months of Trump's second term, the president launched a curious campaign to take over the country to ensure U.S. national security. Those overtures were rebuffed, but have led to continuing hard feelings in Denmark.
In an interview, senior Danish politician Claus Hjort Frederiksen lamented, "My parents, who had their youth during World War II here, they loved the Americans who came to our rescue in 1945. For me—a person who has been trusting the U.S. all these years since then—it’s very hard to experience that it doesn’t mean anything anymore, that we had fought alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan, in Iraq and many other places, that suddenly we are nothing.”
That feeling extends to his sons, with Frederiksen admitting, "They are very, very angry with the U.S.”
According to the report, last August, long before Donald Trump was re-elected, the U.S. had a 48 percent approval rating among the Danish people. As of February, it had plummeted to 20 percent.
In a recent poll, 41 percent of Danes described the U.S. "as a threat to their nation."
Conservative Danish lawmaker Rasmus Jarlov said, "It’s a very big change in a very short time. We have always talked about the U.S. as our closest ally. It’s no longer well-regarded to go on vacation to the United States, it’s now something to be frowned upon."
With European leaders, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, backing Denmark against U.S. efforts, ex-Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod stated, "We don’t need to do anything now because Trump has actually managed to obtain the opposite of what he wanted. He alienated the Greenlandic people and made many of them afraid.”
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