Trump ‘wanted Greenland for US after seeing it on map’

DONALD Trump offered to trade US territory Puerto Rico for Denmark’s Greenland in secret negotiations with the government in Copenhagen, a new book claims.

The ex-president is said to have wanted to buy the island near North America for the US after spotting it on a map and saying: ‘Why don’t we have that?’

He suggested the idea in 2019 and, although it was dismissed as ‘Trump being Trump’, he is said to have kept on pushing until Ronald Lauder, an heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics firm, offered himself as a ‘back channel’ to negotiate with the Danes. When they refused to sell it, the trade for Puerto Rico – the Caribbean island Trump once branded ‘dirty’ and ‘corrupt’ – was proposed.

Among other claims in Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s The Divider: Trump in the White House is that Mr Trump waved aside his wife’s warning that ‘you’re blowing this’ over his botched response to Covid, saying: ‘You worry too much.’