President Donald Trump's social media blitz over the past several days has sparked concern among onlookers, but one post in particular ignited an international episode that led to the summoning of a U.S. ambassador, Reuters reported Tuesday.
Among Trump’s countless online posts published over the past few days was one that depicted all of North America — including Cuba, Mexico, Canada, Greenland and Iceland — as being part of the United States.
While Trump has actively sought to acquire Greenland for the United States — and joked about acquiring Canada — his inclusion of Iceland in his social media post led Iceland’s foreign minister, Thorgerdur Gunnarsdottir, to summon U.S. Ambassador to Iceland Billy Long, Reuters reported, citing a report from Ríkisútvarpið (RÚV), Iceland’s national public service broadcaster.
“The position was clearly expressed that the post was completely inappropriate,” Gunnarsdottir told RÚV, according to Reuters.
It is unclear whether Trump intended to include Iceland in his doctored map of North America. Trump has appeared to confuse Iceland with Greenland in previous remarks. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Trump said that NATO “loved” him until he “told them about Iceland,” claiming that all he was “asking for is a piece of ice.”
Trump has posted several dozen times on his social media platform Truth Social this week, including a post ranking himself as “the greatest” president of all time, seven posts in a row promoting the idea of renaming New Mexico to “New America,” and a number of posts that appear to have been generated with artificial intelligence depicting him in hellish landscapes surrounded by menacing robots.
