MSNBC foreign correspondent Molly Hunter delivered a blunt reality check Thursday about the Trump administration’s overtures toward Greenland, as Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance prepared to visit the country Friday.
Reporting live from the capital city of Nuuk, Hunter said, “We have met no one in the 18 hours that we’ve been on the ground who has been enthusiastic about this trip.”
Originally planned as a “cultural tour” led by Usha Vance, the visit has been “scaled back” and reframed as a national security trip, with a stop at a U.S. Space Force base, and now includes the vice president himself, said Hunter.
“No one was particularly enthusiastic” about being part of Usha Vance’s trip, she said.
Speaking with locals, Hunter said, the revised itinerary was now seen as more appropriate. “No one felt particularly angry that they [the Vances] were going to meet with” U.S. military personnel, she said.
Her analysis of local feeling was echoed by Danish broadcaster TV 2’s Jesper Steinmetz, who reported that U.S. representatives informally polling Greenlanders about a potential visit from Usha Vance were met with “no, no, no, no, no, every single time.”
Mineral-rich Greenland has long been cited by Trump as key to U.S. national security, an idea that has been firmly rejected by Danish and Greenlandic officials. Many Greenlanders are more focused on gaining independence.
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Former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.), a vocal critic of Trump, skewered the awkwardness of the trip during the segment, joking that the White House should’ve sent actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus instead: “And play a little ‘Veep’ soundtrack for this trip because that’s what this is shaping up to be.”
