All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 14, 2026 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
27:17
Trump Wants Greenland 'The Easy Way Or The Hard Way'

What at first seemed like a whimsical or even humorous claim has now taken a more sinister turn. President Trump has demanded that Greenland come under control of the US government or the Russians or Chinese will take if over. Will the US invade? Purchase? Lease?

|

Time Text
Why Discuss Russia? 00:14:35
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing fine, good, just fine.
Good, good.
We're going to talk about the cold weather.
We're thinking about opening up a visitor spot up there for summer months so you can get cooled off.
But it's in the news, so we like to talk about it.
I can remember the very first time the subject of Greenland came up.
And in grade school, I couldn't draw anything, but I always looked for things that I could do.
And I used to like to just draw maps.
You know, if we were studying England or Greenland, I'd want to draw the map of Greenland.
And I do remember that little lesson coming up, and it was probably about the fourth grade or so.
And they said, well, the reason they call it Greenland is try to fool the settlers into thinking there are green trees up there.
So I guess that's been an old story.
But right now, it's getting to be much more serious about it.
And I was just scanning hundreds of years of history of Greenland.
It's pretty neat.
They've been left alone, basically.
And the people who did associate with it was voluntarism.
And, you know, Norway has been the main country that has been closely associated, but we've worked with them.
We have a military base there, which is not the most irresponsible thing we've ever done.
But this is very interesting now that all of a sudden this is a big issue, and it has to do with our current president.
He's sort of fascinated with England and thinks that the whole world will be saved if only we had Greenland.
And he says his attitude to get is just the spirit of his desires, the headline on zero is anything less than the U.S. control of Greenland is unacceptable.
Trump, as ministers, hosted at White House.
So he said, he's, but how long he's been talking about this.
I think he even mentioned it even on his first tour.
He likes this idea of expansion.
But as we get into this, the one thing that fascinated me about, well, maybe we have a better way because we have to sort of be open to this.
Why don't we just buy it?
But I don't think his purchase of it is exactly like what some people might think.
But he wants to give everybody that lives there a million dollars.
Wow.
And let's move there fast.
But then again, and they said there will be somebody, probably some very poor people up there who say, hey, this is a good deal.
But then again, where's the million dollars going to come from?
It's going to come from the government.
The government is broke.
And how many people are going to move in?
How many children are going to be born there all of a sudden?
So it's just so overly simplistic.
You know, if you get a million dollars from a country that's flat out broke and people are rejecting our currency, and this is sent to us as a serious suggestion to, you know, get Greenland into our portfolio.
And yet, I think, generally speaking, there's been a pretty good relationship because of the geography and everything.
I think that nobody overly worries about it.
Now, I think I become more interested.
What in thunder are they going through this?
And I'm sure there could be development in Greenland through volunteerism and contracts and drilling and all that kind of stuff.
Even volunteerism and a military base if they really feel that's necessary.
But it's an interesting story.
But I guess to me, the most interesting part is why the rhetoric and why the demands and this effort to do this when we have a few other problems to deal with.
And he has Trump has enough foreign enemies.
I mean, he doesn't win friends and influence people.
But he loses.
So I think, you know, somebody said, well, why don't we just have a referendum?
This is a good idea.
But there's been a lot of referendum up there.
And the people there aren't exactly happy to say, oh, yeah, we want to be part of New York City.
Yeah.
Well, here's the article.
But, you know, as you say, we've heard it all here.
And at first, I thought it was just sort of quirky, one of those Trump things that are sort of endearing and quirky.
And yeah, Greenland, whatever.
But after Venezuela, I guess anything is possible.
But here's what he said.
Anything less than U.S. control of Greenland is unacceptable.
Trump, as ministers, hosted the White House.
Now, here's what he posted on Truth Social.
If you go to the next one, here's President Trump's thinking on Greenland.
And I'll read it, actually.
The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of national security.
It is vital for the golden dome that we are building.
NATO should be leading the way for us to get it.
If we don't, Russia or China will.
And that's not going to happen.
That's all caps, by the way.
Militarily, without the power of the United States, much of which I built during my first term, and now am bringing to a new and even higher level, NATO would not be an effective force or deterrent, not even close.
They know that, and so do I. NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the United States.
Anything less than that is unacceptable.
Thank you for your attention to the matter, President D.J.T. That's his thinking.
Now, he articulated his views on Greenland recently to a meeting in the White House.
Let's listen to that first video and get a sense of President Trump's thinking about Greenland.
He clearly is serious about the matter.
Well, listen to that.
It's a little longer than usual, but for the context, let's listen to the whole thing here.
How much money are you thinking of giving people in Greenland to get them on board with a possible U.S. I'm not talking about money for Greenland yet?
I might talk about that.
But right now, we are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not, because if we don't do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we're not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.
I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way.
But if we don't do it the easy way, we're going to do it the hard way.
And I'm a man.
And by the way, I'm a fan of Denmark, too, I have to tell you.
And, you know, they've been very nice to me.
I'm a big fan.
But, you know, the fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn't mean that they own the land.
Sure, we had lots of boats go there also.
But we need that because if you take a look outside of Greenland right now, there are Russian destroyers.
There are Chinese destroyers and bigger.
There are Russian submarines all over the place.
We're not going to have Russia or China occupy Greenland.
And that's what they're going to do if we don't.
So we're going to be doing something with Greenland either the nice way or the more difficult way.
It was pointed out, Dr. Paul, as well as we are not going to have Russia as our neighbor.
Now go to that next clip.
And I don't know if you've seen this, but someone better tell them about this pretty quick.
No, no, no, not the video, the clip.
Yeah.
We're not going to have Russia as our neighbor, says President Trump.
Put that next one up if you can, please.
Now the joke has lost its punch.
There we go.
There's the United States and Russia.
We are two and a half miles away from Russia.
They are our neighbor, Dr. Paul.
So I don't know if someone told President Trump that they already are our neighbor, but that's it.
The hard way or the easy way is what President Trump said on Greenland.
I'm not sure exactly what that means.
I wonder if Trump will start thinking about fair value on property and say, hey, I think we ripped the Russians off.
Maybe we ought to go back and compensate them because we got it for a penny.
We sure did.
That's just unbelievable.
And the cheerleading was very good.
It was well placed there.
And I was trying to figure out who were all these.
These were diplomats sitting around listening to Trump or people who worked for his administration.
Well, they were Danish, there were ministers too, European ministers, government ministers there.
I wonder if they were cheering.
I don't know how they felt about it.
They were there for more money themselves.
Well, here's a little bit more from the article.
If we can go to that next one, Denmark's foreign minister, Lars Loke Rasmussen, and Greenland's foreign minister, Vivian Mozvelt, originally outright rejected talks with Rubio.
However, the meeting is now to be held in Washington after Vance asked to participate.
So they will face down Vance.
Greenland and Denmark have consistently made clear that the territory is not for sale, accusing the U.S. of applying, quote, unacceptable pressure on a long-standing ally.
And you referenced this early on, Dr. Paul, in your comments today.
They also point out that the 1951 bilateral agreement already permits the U.S. to significantly expand its military presence on the island.
So it's not like they're saying, hey, you guys, you can't come here.
We already have the ability to do that.
They'll never get that message out because I think the cheerleading, that's the genius of Trump.
He's able to take something that could be complicated.
It could be controversial.
And it just really isn't.
It's very simple.
We're the boss and we're going to do it.
And everybody will listen and they'll be better off for it.
And it's a very influential position that he holds.
So he's very positive on it.
So in politics, it can get you a long way, but it doesn't cancel out mistakes.
And individuals, when they want to rule and make all the decisions, whether it's foreign policy or economic policy or monetary policy, yes, it may work for a while, but that's sort of like if you and I went out and borrowed the amount of money we want to build our studio, you know, and we get it, then we don't generate the funds to pay it off.
This is what happens all the time.
So I would say that they ought to be more frugal in ideas of just anything to go.
And it's whatever I want and what we can do.
But there's also already people know about corporatism and they know there's a lot of military profiteering.
And there's, I mean, what if just in Greenland, if you build some more bases there, you might justify it, you know, because of the danger.
But I think he maybe exaggerated that there's a bunch of Russians and Chinese up there ready to pounce on our East Coast.
I just have a little trouble with that.
Yeah, I think that is exaggerated.
And I think there's been some fact-checking on that.
Now, you pointed out the idea of buying them out.
This is from the article, if you put the next one up.
But what if the people want to take a buyout from the U.S.?
Giving each citizen a huge single cash sum is actually among the more creative ideas which have been floated.
Now, you mentioned this.
The figure of $1 million has been something in media reports, for example.
And we can imagine there are many Greenlenders that would take it.
I think we can both say that we're both Greenlenders now, if that's the case.
Well, the next one's KT McFarland, who was a deputy national security advisor under several presidents.
And KT had this to say.
57,000 Greenlanders, if you paid them $1 million each, it would be $57 billion.
Throw in American citizenship.
That's a bargain, considering we'd get access to their rare earths, oils, and crucial location in the Arctic.
Now, I think we should focus on the word weed.
We would.
Because, you know, our friend and colleague, Norman Singleton, sent over a clip this morning.
Now, it's not exactly related, but it's Ann Coulter and Anna Kasparian arguing about how we are going to take the oil in Venezuela.
And it's interesting the way it turns out because you mentioned corporatism.
Let's listen to this clip.
It's a little bit shrill because they're yelling at each other, but it nevertheless is quite interesting.
It's got a twist at the end.
So get through it until the end.
And let's listen to this one.
Smaller thanks too expensive.
And how dare you take their oil?
Yeah, you bet we're taking their oil.
And we're going to make a lot of money off it.
And we should have been doing that.
This is total BS.
I don't think we're going to stop at this point.
This is about Allah.
This is a warning to the other countries.
And yes, we are going to take their oil.
This is going to be saying, oh, it's Juix too expensive.
And how dare you take their oil?
Yeah, you bet we're taking their oil.
And we're going to make a lot of money off it.
And we should have been doing that for a while.
So to be clear, I just want to make sure everyone's on the same page because the oil companies will make money.
They will make a profit, but they socialize the costs of seizing Venezuela's oil.
So we're paying for that, but we're not going to benefit from it.
Anna Kasparian did a great job socializing the cost, privatizing the profits.
She's good.
That's just so, so bad.
I just can't take it some days.
Yeah, so that's the whole thing is the we.
We are going to take the, who's you said it yesterday.
Who's we?
I mean, do we get a check?
Do we get a check from Venezuela's oil?
We Socialize Costs, Privatize Profits 00:07:09
Yes.
And people don't realize that this is not something new that popped up.
Oh, this is a new idea.
We've never done this before.
How many times have we heard this argument since you and I knew each other, you know, since the beginning of this century?
There's been so many battles going on and oil involved and, you know, invasions, everything.
But it won't cost us anything.
We're going to get the oil and they'll take care of it.
Now, now, I guess the loot that we're going to take from Venezuela is not quite so valuable as they once thought.
But it's also, they don't stop when they should.
Are you using force to do this?
Is this illegal force and immoral sport force?
And, you know, when I was thinking of that, listening to that, just that conversation a few minutes ago, and it's our oil and demanding all this.
I was just wondering, you know, this shouldn't bring up religion, but this just didn't hit my, hit me right about, is this Christian charity?
Yeah, some would argue that, though.
You're going to steal it.
But it is theft.
But of course, we move it back a little bit more to make the clear, a clear understanding that even when government, you know, just takes it, you know, there's corruption, there's fraud and corruption.
Everybody understands that.
Don't steal what has already been stolen once, but you can go and steal more from the people because, you know, the law says you can't.
And that's why I think it's so important people understand that they are looking to natural law and decide to follow natural law rather than the laws that can be varied and used to people's own self-interest.
The other aspect that I haven't seen much covered about this is I'm sure the people in Greenland are fine.
I actually, as a kid, dreamed about Greenland too.
It seemed like a really neat place, a very unusual place.
I'm sure there are great people there, but we can't lie to ourselves that this is a nation of rugged individualist libertarians.
In fact, it's the opposite.
And this is the other aspect, if you can put this, and I described this from Fortune magazine, but this is something no one has talked about so far.
As far as I know, if Trump takes control of Greenland, he would have to build a welfare state that he doesn't want for his own citizens.
So if you go to the next one, here's a little bit that I dug up about Greenland.
Now, here's from that article.
Now, one possibility is a compact of free association, Dr. Paul, which is something that we have with Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands.
And it says that kind of an agreement rather than take over would give Washington the right to operate military bases and make decisions about the island security in exchange for U.S. security guarantees, and I highlight this, and around $7 billion of yearly economic assistance, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Whoa, hold on.
That's not sounding so great.
Now go to the next one.
It's from the same article from Fortune.
Even if the U.S. managed to take control of Greenland, it would likely come with a large bill.
The person interviewed for the article said, that's because Greenlanders currently have Danish citizenship and access to the Danish welfare system, including free health care and schooling.
And I thought, what?
We're going to do that.
So I looked it up, Dr. Paul, just to make sure you got to check.
You got to double check.
Go to that next clip.
Yeah, they actually do have that.
What do healthcare services cost in Greenland?
Most healthcare services in Greenland are public and thus free for citizens, general practitioners, village consultations, public dental care, medical specialists, prescription medicine, home, nursing care.
I'm not denigrating what they have.
I'm just pointing out not only this, but what do they have?
Here's the next one.
They also have higher education in Greenland as tuition free for residents and students from Nordic countries.
So I just wonder how Americans are going to feel about when we take over all this minerals, but we give Greenland, the people in Greenland, things that Americans can't even dream of affording.
You know, so often this issue comes up and we say, well, we can, you know, start by demilitarizing our operations around the world.
But we're doing exactly the opposite.
We're increasing our military activities by saying we're going to have more bases in Greenland.
So it just doesn't add up.
And I think mistakes are made because they endorse the principle of force.
And then sometimes the forces with guns and IRS agents and whatever.
But many times, and I think our current administration is very good at it, and that is threat.
You know, like I think that I don't think without checking the record that every country has been threatened by tariffs in these past eight months or so have had that many put on it.
They've had a lot of threats and people get scared and they rightfully should be, but the principles are not looked at.
They say, how can I get by?
And how can I maneuver this?
And how can we trade this off?
And they play these games.
Private ownership and local control would go a long way to solving some of those problems.
And I just wonder if more Americans understood that the riches of Greenland are going to go to the politically connected companies around President Trump.
Well, we're going to have to bear the cost of this $7 billion a year.
And, you know, healthcare affordability in the U.S. is a real issue.
I mean, try buying some health insurance on the open market and see how much it's going to cost you.
So what are Americans going to do when they look at this?
These people in Greenland get free health care.
Hey, that's fine, whatever.
But we still have to pay 30,000, 40,000 a year for our families to have health care.
And meanwhile, Trump's crony companies are making billions.
That doesn't seem like a good deal.
When I was in the military, I made a stop in Alaska and the climate was different.
The conditions were different.
Prices were much higher.
But they were compensated by getting bonuses because they lived in difficult places.
Greenland would qualify for this.
They try to catch up with what they already have.
But what if they like what they have?
And they don't want to get mixed up with our system that's not working so well.
But it's not easily taken care of, especially when people are looking for how are we going to expand our power and what's it going to do in a voting booth?
And what is it going to do to bring people together and support and bow down to what our administrations are demanding?
Iran's Peaceful Progress 00:05:00
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'm going to close out now.
We'll see what happens.
Maybe we'll get Greenland.
Maybe we'll get a free vacation there or something.
Maybe we'll move the studio to Greenland.
We won't have such a high air conditioning bill as we have here.
But I'm going to close out with just kind of a follow-up from one of the things we kept our eye on for quite a while now.
This is the Iran situation.
Now, if you put up that last clip of mine, I just want to put this out there.
Now, Max Blumenthal, a good friend of ours, of course, he reposted this.
This is a post on X from Tamir Morag, who is the chief diplomatic correspondent for Israel's Channel 14.
And this is an amazing and interesting admission by the Israeli media.
He says, tonight, we published in the main edition of Channel 14, foreign elements are arming the protesters in Iran with live weapons.
And this is the reason for hundreds of dead among the regime's people.
Anyone is free to guess who we're talking about.
To which Max Blumenthal said, Western media persists with the mantra of unarmed protesters being massacred wantonly by Iran's security forces as visual evidence of ISIS-style attacks piles up.
Now the Israelis openly admit that they are working to turn Iran into Syria circa 2013, and they are driving the death toll.
So they're openly admitting, Dr. Paul, that they are arming the people, the rioters.
They're not peaceful protesters in the streets.
So keep that in mind when you're going to be bombarded with propaganda about what's going on in Iran.
We want to thank all of our viewers.
Again, our ex-live viewers.
We've got a good live viewership today on X.
This is something new for us, and we feel encouraged by it.
Looks like we're over 3,000 live viewers right now on X, and we definitely appreciate that, as well as our other live viewers on Rumble, of course, who stick with us with a lively discussion.
So thanks for tuning into the show.
Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
I want to close with a follow-up on our message today.
You know, the first time people went in into Greenland were the Norse settlers, and that was in the 10th century.
That's a long time ago that they had some type of interest in this territory.
But I think the real connection occurred in 1261.
The Greenland colony came under Norwegian rule, linked by trade.
So that sounded like it's a very natural thing that occurred.
We don't read about how bloody the war was for that to happen.
It was coming together under a trade agreement.
But it's been on and on there.
But this idea that we don't give a darn about the Europeans who were involved very much traditionally, that would like to say, well, American history, we don't want to have pay any attention to back in those colonial days when they talked about the Constitution and all that stuff.
That's wait by.
That's past history.
And that's done all the time.
And some people might think I'm just making that up, but we heard them literally say it that, you know, and people have this principle that it's a living, changing document.
You don't want a rigid document.
And the founder says, yes, we agree.
You can change it, but change it, you know, with an agreed process.
How do you do it?
So anyway, this is an interesting story.
I think if it ends up in violence or unnecessary debt on unhappy people or less freedoms, it's going to be sad.
But it just seems a little weird with all the things going on.
And we're involved in trillions and trillions of dollars of transactions that will never be traced and never be paid for.
Here we are looking for some more problems because we need some more things to do.
I think it's sad because all this could be reduced in effort and it could do a lot to save, you know, a lot of money.
It could do something to protect our currency.
It could move us toward more peaceful conditions around the world.
The aggressiveness of foreign policy doesn't add up unless you've been aggressed against.
Yes, defending oneself is fine, but to go out and say, I'm the boss here, get out of the town because we want to take over and we can do a better job because next year somebody might invade you and we're going to take care of you.
I mean, the whole thing shouldn't be that acceptable.
People should realize that it doesn't work that well.
And sometimes they have to say, well, just wait a while to see how it happened.
Okay, after 100 years, they'll say, yeah, you were right.
That's what happened.
It's not working well.
The Case for Liberty 00:00:29
Anyway, I vote for the cause of liberty, the limited government, and the introduction to these issues by our founders and our constitution.
And that is, I think, the road to more peace and prosperity.
And I want to thank all our viewers and supporters for paying attention to this and working for and improving the cause for liberty, because that is where we're going to find our answers.
Thank you very much for tuning in today.
Export Selection