President Donald Trump was swiftly fact-checked after he made the oddball claim that the United States was "there" when Denmark established colonies on Greenland.
Trump made the claim during an announcement of a new "Trump class" of battleships that will be equipped with state-of-the-art weapon capabilities and represent the "warrior ethos" and "lethality" championed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The fact that he mentioned Greenland at the time is no accident, either.
Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, alongside the Faroe Islands, the only other autonomous territory within the Kingdom. Citizens of both Greenland and the Faroe Islands are full citizens of Denmark. As one of the Overseas Countries and Territories of the European Union, Greenland’s citizens are also recognized as EU citizens.
The world has watched Trump nervously since he re-entered office and voiced his desire for territorial expansion, calling "the ownership and control of Greenland" an "absolute necessity."
Vice President JD Vance has thrown himself into this fool's errand wholeheartedly; he once told locals they would be better off as part of the U.S. rather than Denmark. He repeatedly accused Denmark of failing Greenland’s people but provided no specific examples, aside from vague references to “aggressive incursions” by Russia and China.
And Trump—even while wildly wrong—was determined to convince people that the U.S. has a legitimate claim to Greenland's shores when he said:
"We need it for national protection. We need Greenland for national protection. They have a very small population and I don't know, they say Denmark but Denmark has spent no money there with military protection."
"They say Denmark was there 300 years ago with something with a boat but we were there with boats too, I'm sure."
You can hear what Trump said in the video below.
Trump truly knows nothing about the history behind Denmark's colonization of Greenland.
The earliest Nordic presence in Greenland traces back to the late 10th century, when Erik the Red—banished from Iceland for manslaughter—established settlements there. These Norse communities eventually became part of a wider North Atlantic realm governed from Norway.
The Norse remained in Greenland for several centuries, but by the early 1400s they had vanished. Scholars point to several likely causes, including a cooling climate that made life increasingly difficult and possible conflict with Inuit populations who were moving into the same regions.
Contact was reestablished in 1721, when Norwegian missionary Hans Egede, backed by the united Dano-Norwegian crown, sailed to Greenland out of concern that the Norse settlers might have missed the Protestant Reformation and remained Catholic.
Upon arrival, Egede discovered that the Norse were gone and only Inuit communities remained, firmly rooted across the island. He shifted his mission to converting the Inuit to Christianity, marking the beginning of Greenland’s colonial era under Danish-Norwegian influence.
Moreover, the U.S. did not exist 300 years ago—the country was not established until July 4, 1776, when the men we've come to know as the Founding Fathers officially broke away from the British Crown, an event that kicked off the Revolutionary War.
You'd think Trump might be able to do a little basic math considering he recently announced several plans for America's 250th anniversary, including the "Patriot Games," in which one male and one female high schooler from each state and territory compete in an "unprecedented four-day athletic event."
While Washington, D.C., is not a state, the city is set to host a “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall, featuring representation from all 50 states. The event will serve as a centerpiece of the July 4 festivities as Trump reprises his “Salute to America.”
The president also said construction on a proposed triumphal arch would begin “in the very near future” and reiterated plans for a statue garden honoring what he described as “American heroes.”
That's just the tip of the iceberg for all the things the Trump administration has planned—and Trump was swiftly called out for overlooking a basic fact about the country he claims to love so much.
Sounds like someone absolutely needs to brush up on their American history. How embarrassing.
@nyknicks/X
@RaqiThunda/X
@SLCLunk/X
@thegodshow.com/Bluesky
