According to the Washington Post on August 15, two people familiar with the matter said that trump had urged his senior aides to investigate whether the US government could buy "huge and ice covered" Greenland.
The Washington Post quoted the Wall Street Journal as saying that President trump has "expressed interest in the cold land", but Denmark, which owns Greenland, has not weighed the pros and cons of this matter. Trump's request confused his White House aides. Some of them thought trump was not serious about buying the island, but he "has mentioned it for several weeks".
Like Trump's many "interesting ideas", the purchase of Greenland needs to be closely discussed before it is officially put into practice. At present, there have been some discussions, including the legitimacy of purchasing an island, the procedures for purchasing an island with its own government and population, and the source of funds for purchasing a huge land.
In this regard, the British Guardian reported that although Trump's idea is frivolous, it is not unrealistic. In 1946, US President Truman tried to buy Greenland from Denmark for $100 million, but was rejected. A more successful precedent can be traced back to 1917, when the United States bought the Danish West Indies in the Caribbean Sea and renamed it the United States Virgin Islands.
The U.S. military has established Tulle Air Force Base in the northwest of Greenland. The base is the northernmost military base in the United States, with 600 garrison personnel. It is very important in the U.S. global radar system.
Greenland is the largest island in the world, located between the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the territory is located in the Arctic circle. It is an autonomous territory of Denmark. According to relevant statistics, Greenland needs to rely on the subsidy of US $591 million from the Danish government every year. According to the Greenland treaty in 1985, Greenland withdrew from the European Communities, the predecessor of the European Union. Therefore, Greenland does not belong to the European Union, but is regarded as a part of the special field of the European Union.