Donald Trump is apparently considering sending money directly to Greenlanders as part of his plotted landgrab of the Arctic island.
White House officials are discussing a range of options between $10,000 and $100,000 per person to bribe them to let the US take control, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The population of Greenland sits somewhere around 57,000 and it currently remains a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. This means that on the higher end the US could end up paying Greenland residents $5.7 billion should the bribe be accepted.
It’s not clear how the logistics of the payments would work – and whether bribing Greenlanders would be a legal way for the US to go about acquiring the landmass.
The proposal, however, does provide at least one explanation of how the US might move forward with trying to ‘buy’ the island after Denmark has expressed it has no interest in letting go of its Arctic territory.
And Greenland leadership has definitively rejected any US purchase proposal.
‘Enough is enough… No more fantasies about annexation,’ Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen wrote in a social media post on Sunday after Trump reupped the proposal this weekend.
The island’s Prime Minister Mute Egede stated on multiple occasions: ‘We are not for sale and will never be for sale.’
Americans aren’t so set on Donald Trump taking military action or enacting regime change in Greenland despite the president making it clear that could be a next target after Venezuela
President Donald Trump says that the US needs Greenland for the sake of national security
Trump’s resurgence of interest in the island came after the US capture and extradition of now-ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
The president had previously floated acquiring Greenland even before taking office for his second term, noting the strategic location and the ability for the US to provide more deterrence in the region against Russia and China.
‘We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark isn’t going to be able to do it,’ Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday.
He insisted: ‘It’s so strategic.’
Even if Trump did try to bribe Greenlanders with lump sum payments, it doesn’t appear he would be successful in swaying them.
A poll conducted by Verian and commissioned by Danish newspapers in January 2025 – when Trump was going hard on his rhetoric of buying Greenland – showed that 85 percent of Greenlanders do not want to become part of the US.
Only 6 percent were in favor and 9 percent were undecided.
The White House, when asked about the prospect of sending money directly to Greenlanders, referred Reuters to comments made by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday.
At her press briefing, Leavitt told reporters that Trump’s team was ‘looking at what a potential purchase would look like.’
And Rubio says he plans to meet with his Danish counterpart in Washington, DC next week to discuss the issue of Greenland.
Vice President JD Vance visited Greenland in March 2025 for a few hours to tour the US Pituffik Space Base as Trump continued to float the idea of acquiring Greenland to gain more control over the strategically placed Arctic island
Last year Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance visited Greenland in March, and spent a few hours on the island touring a military base.
Vance warned reporters during that trip that the US has to ‘wake up’ to China and Russia’s threats in the region.
‘We can’t just bury our head in the sand,’ he said before quipping, ‘or, in Greenland, bury our head in the snow.’
His visit came just two months after Donald Trump Jr. and now-deceased conservative luminary Charlie Kirk led a delegation to Greenland just days before Trump took office for his second term.
