Why Trump Wants Greenland

Why has Donald Trump considered invading Greenland? How does he think it will benefit him? What is the role of China in the Arctic? And what animals have Russia trained to spy for them? Listen as Alastair and Kenneth R. Rosen answer these questions and more. To hear the full episode, sign up at ⁠⁠therestispolitics.com⁠⁠ __________ Instagram: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Twitter: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: James Clayden Producer: India Dunkley Senior Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

  Hi there, it's Alistair. This week we're releasing the second episode in our mini-series on the Battle for the Arctic. It is a vital, often overlooked, political issue that is so significant to so many of the big names in global politics. So in this episode, we're looking at why does Donald Trump really want Greenland? We're looking at China's role in the region and also some of the incredible stories of how Russia is spying, using whales to help it. If that sounds good to you, here is a clip from that episode. To hear the full thing, get all the benefits of a trip plus membership, sign up at therestispolitics.com.

• 0:35Alastair Campbell?

  Let's just turn now to Trump and Greenland. It is incredible how, I mean, it's true, he mentioned it in his first term and he talked about it, but he said it's not a top priority. I'd like it one day, maybe that can happen. But then I came across this, partly because I was looking into the Epstein files, came across this story about a guy called Ronald Lauder. Now, the most famous Lauder that I know is Harry Lauder, who's a former Scottish musician. But Este Lauder, cosmetics, this is her son, a billionaire, a Trump supporter. And it turns out, he's the guy who put into Trump's mind the idea that maybe part of making America great again

• 1:19Alastair Campbell?

  is to make America bigger and Greenland is really, really, really big. And he then went and started to invest in Greenland, as others have done. As I read somewhere, you've had Sam Altman, you've had Bill Gates, you've had Jeff Bezos kind of sniffing around some of the investments that there might be in Greenland. But what's your take on why your president, I know you're not a supporter of his, but what's your take on why he went from that first term? Yeah, kind of interesting, might look at it one day, to it seeming to be literally almost as big an obsession as the Arctic is with you?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Well, according to two independent reports, Lauder, who went to the Wharton School of Business with Trump back in the day, is the one who whispered in his ear that Greenland could be valuable for X number of things. I think we can't undermine the notion that Trump is a lame duck president. He's got three years left. He might lose the House and the Senate in the midterm elections. So he's going full bore on a lot of different things. He's also taking credit for a lot of the agreements that the Biden administration struck, whether it be the port, the Deepwater Port in Gnome that's being constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers, or the ice pack between Finland, Canada, and the US to build icebreakers. So

• 2:34Speaker 01

  I think that it's become more important for Trump because he's on his way out. But I think that there's a desire in his administration to claim successes that were already had. For instance, when Trump was in Davos, he met with Mark Rude, the Secretary General of NATO, and they struck this quote unquote framework that nobody knows the details about. But ostensibly, it's just an acknowledgement of the 1951 agreement between the Kingdom of Denmark and the US. And so as long as the US populace remains uneducated about Greenland, Trump can claim victory on that, the same way he did with Chinese tariffs, first making them astronomically high and then lowering them to the rate that they were initially

• 3:17Speaker 01

  and claiming a win. So I think that there's a desire to just chalk up more and more victories that are on their face false.

• 3:24Alastair Campbell?

  I just want to, you know, drill down a little bit on this Trump stuff because Trump being Trump, I think it was when he did an interview for the book, The Divider, with Peter Baker and his wife Susan Glasser. And he talked about, you know, well, I love looking at maps and I saw a map and I thought, hey, Greenland. And he wants to say it was all his idea. And everybody has to say it was his idea. But this guy, it seems to me, this guy Lauder really was sort of pushing him. And of course, Lauder is a big business guy. He's an art collector. He's a MAGA donor. As I say, he was in the Epstein files because Epstein's and Lauder's staff were arranging lunches for each other. And this was after

• 4:05Alastair Campbell?

  we all knew about Epstein having been, you know, jailed and all that stuff. But the other thing is, he's the father-in-law of none other than Kevin Walsh.

• 4:16Alastair Campbell?

  Who is about to become, if Trump has his way, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. So it's all kind of, you do get a sense that business is a big part of what this Greenland push is about, and that presumably is to do with mineral exploration.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  I get extremely frustrated by that line of thinking, in part because what you're saying in essence is that these octogenarians are somehow having the foresight of mind and care for their heirs to want to explore and build out infrastructure and commerce in places that are not going to turn a profit for 50 years. That's how ice-bound Greenland is.

• 5:01Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  And there's no logical precedent to say that the US considers the future beyond four years with the change of presidents, maybe eight years. You know, the longevity of thinking that is necessary for benefiting from the Arctic is immense. China does it well, as we know. Russia is doing it in a different way, but better. The US simply doesn't have the capacity to say, we are thinking 50 years down the road. We don't have that luxury. So to say we're going to develop Greenland for benefit of cryolite, for rubies, for, you know, for all the minerals that you spoke about in the last episode is bonkers.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  You know, the quick return on investment that these guys, the Estee Lauder heir, you know, Trump international heirs, that's not going to happen here.

• 5:59Alastair Campbell?

  So do you think it is much more about just adding territory? Like Alaska was added by buying it, and if you get Greenland, he leaves office saying, I didn't just make America great in his own head, I made it bigger as well. Is that what this is about?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  I think so, but I also think if we look at the new national security strategy, it does take a hemispheric approach and sort of torpedo's the transatlantic partnership, right? And there is something to be said for, maybe this is a smart way forward for American national security to say, we're going to consolidate and look at the Western Hemisphere and this part of the world in which we have close proximity to and not worry about what's happening in Europe and the rest of the world and Eurasia. Maybe there is some benefit to that. And I think that that's a different idea. It's certainly not one we've discussed in the past, but there is some validity to the argument. Whether or not Trump wants to increase the American geography, maybe, I don't know, you know,

• 6:56Speaker 01

  he is a, you know, a tempestuous guy who has an ego bigger than Greenland. So we'll see.

• 7:04Alastair Campbell?

  What, the people that you know who live in Greenland, not just Greenland, but the whole, the whole area, but particularly Greenland, because it's been so much the focus of the international debate. And I was in Davos for Trump's speech and, you know, it was clearly, it was huge part of what was going on there. Everyone was talking about Greenland. And I kept thinking, like, my dad's from the Hebrides, right? Kind of little islands and, you know, I kept thinking, what would it be like if the Hebrides suddenly became the place that the whole world is talking about? People would find it quite difficult. So what was it like for the people you know in Greenland, suddenly to be this center of global attention and have JD Vance's wife say she's coming to the sled race and

• 7:45Alastair Campbell?

  then, no, you're not, okay, JD's coming in. I mean, it's been a bit weird, isn't it?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, as an American, as an American journalist poking around, most of the residents that I spoke to recognized that I was coming with this understanding that, you know, Trump had ratcheted up discussions and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had ratcheted up these discussions about one in Greenland. But I remember I got waylaid in the, was it northeastern part of the country because there was a

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Ice clouds. So the helicopter that I was supposed to take to a small little village was not going to take off and I was way late at the airport there. And so I ended up helping one of the workers there who's an Inuit airport worker, paint the floor of a hangar. And that is just how we spent our afternoon, just with roller brushes, painting the floor. And we got to talking and he pretty much echoed everything that I heard elsewhere in the country, which was, you know, I love Denmark, the Kingdom of Denmark, if I may. I love going there. I think it's a great country. And I appreciate all their support for us, but I think it's crazy that we want to be independent because as much as I, as I value independence, as much as I value self determination as a, as an Inuit person and as a people, as a people of Greenland, I also like the block rent that they give

• 9:01Speaker 01

  us every year to sustain our, our economy and also free flights to and from Copenhagen. So there's this divide internally of saying, well, we want independence, but we want to keep things the way they are.

• 9:15Alastair Campbell?

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