No sale results in no trip to Denmark

WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump on Tuesday night abruptly canceled a trip to Denmark, writing on Twitter that because the country’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, “would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland,” they would meet “another time.”

Trump was scheduled to visit Copenhagen on Sept. 2 and 3, after being invited by Queen Margrethe II. The president was expected to participate in a series of bilateral meetings and meet with business leaders, and Frederiksen had underscored the importance of the meeting, calling the United States “Denmark’s most important and strongest ally in NATO.”

Last week, Trump confirmed reports about his long-held interest in buying Greenland from Denmark, a land deal he has become interested in because of the island’s natural resources, like coal and uranium.

“Well, a lot of things can be done,” Trump said Sunday. “Essentially, it’s a large real estate deal.”

But Trump also claimed that discussing a potential purchase of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory reliant on Danish support, was not the purpose of his trip to Denmark. “We may be going to Denmark, but not for this reason at all,” he said, and claimed again over the weekend that the purchase was not “No. 1 on the burner.”

But Tuesday night, Trump scrapped the entire trip because of it.

“At this time, the visit to Denmark is canceled,” said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman.