European diplomats reveal the ‘tough guy’ US negotiator leading the charge on Greenland: ‘He hates us’

JD Vance unsettled European diplomats by saying the vice president ‘hates us’ following a meeting between the Trump administration and representatives of Denmark and Greenland.

Vance was also joined by Foreign Minister Marco Rubio at the summit with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt.

They still ended the diplomatic discussion with a ‘fundamental disagreement’.

Rasmussen acknowledged that ‘we have failed to change America’s position’ but said he did not expect that.

President Donald Trump has been insistent on seizing Greenland and has not ruled out taking it by force; but Republicans see this scenario as unlikely.

An anonymous European diplomat said: Policy Vance served as Trump’s attack dog, saying: ‘Vance hates us.’

Rasmussen said Denmark, Greenland and the US had agreed to form a high-level working group ‘to explore whether we can find a common way forward’.

He added that he expected the group to hold its first meeting “within a few weeks.”

Danish and Greenlandic officials did not specify who would be in the group or provide any other details.

A summit between Vance and Rubio with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (pictured right) and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt (pictured left) ended with the parties still having a ‘fundamental disagreement’

Rasmussen said the group should focus on how to address US security concerns while respecting Denmark’s ‘red lines’. The two countries are NATO allies.

‘I don’t know if this is doable,’ he added, expressing the hope that exercise ‘could lower the fever.’

He did not elaborate on what a compromise might look like, and expectations are low.

As Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen noted on Thursday, having the group is better than not having the working group and ‘this is a step in the right direction.’

At the very least, it will allow the two parties to talk to each other instead of talking about each other.

Trump has repeatedly argued that the United States should control Greenland for national security reasons.

He has tried to justify his calls for a US takeover by repeatedly claiming that China and Russia have their own designs on Greenland, which has vast untapped reserves of critical minerals.

In response to the president’s announcement, Trump’s own Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, published a map of America’s ‘new interior’ on

President Donald Trump was insistent on seizing Greenland, even though Republicans saw this scenario as the least likely, and did not rule out the possibility of using force in this direction.

A bipartisan delegation of congressional leaders is scheduled to travel to Copenhagen on Thursday to meet with Danish and Greenlandic leaders.

In the Senate, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Lisa Murkowski introduced the NATO Union Preservation Act, which would prevent congressional funds from being used to seize territory of a NATO member country, including Greenland.

A companion bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by a bipartisan group of 34 lawmakers led by Democratic Rep. Bill Keating. Republican Don Bacon is the bill’s only original GOP co-sponsor.

Bacon also threatened on Thursday that Trump would be impeached if he resorted to military action against Greenland.

Danish ambassador Jesper Møller Sørensen and Head of the Greenland Mission to the United States Jacob Isbosethsen met with a dozen lawmakers from both parties in the first week of January.

‘Greenland is not for sale,’ Isbosethsen told reporters after a meeting with Republican Senator Roger Wicker, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Isbosethsen also said that ‘Greenlandic is a very proud people, a very, very proud country’ and ‘very proud to contribute to the Western Alliance, to be a NATO ally and to partner with our friends from Denmark and the United States.’

But Trump appeared insistent that Greenland should be ‘in US hands’, adding that anything less than that was ‘unacceptable’ in a post on the Truth Social site on Wednesday morning.

A Lockheed C-130J Super Hercules of the Royal Danish Air Force arrives at Nuuk international airport on January 15, 2026, the day after its arrival to transport Danish military personnel.

The White House mocked Greenland over X. The post refers to Trump’s claims that if Washington does not act, ‘China or Russia will act’.

Greenland’s diplomatic mission to the US reported on Wednesday

While talks were continuing in Washington on Wednesday, the Danish Ministry of Defense announced that it would increase its military presence in Greenland together with its NATO allies.

France, Germany, Norway and Sweden announced they would send very small numbers of troops, in a symbolic but meaningful move that signaled solidarity with Copenhagen.

Britain said it was part of what a British officer called a reconnaissance group for an endurance exercise in the Arctic.

The German Ministry of Defense, which sent 13 soldiers, said that the aim was to investigate ‘possibilities to ensure security against Russian and Chinese threats in the North Pole’. He said he would send them on a joint flight from Denmark as a ‘strong signal of our unity’.

‘The Danish Armed Forces, together with a number of Arctic and European allies, will explore in the coming weeks how increased presence and exercise activities in the Arctic can be implemented in practice,’ Poulsen said.

According to Danish broadcaster DR, he said on Thursday that his intention was to ‘create a more permanent military presence with a greater Danish contribution’ and to invite allies to take part in exercises and training on a rotating basis.

Although the European troops were largely symbolic at this point, the timing was no coincidence.

Maria Martisiute, an analyst at the Center for European Policy in Brussels, said the deployment ‘serves to send both a political and military signal to America, but also a recognition that Arctic security needs to be further strengthened’.

‘And above all, this must be done through allied efforts, not by the US wanting to come in and take over. This complicates the situation for the USA.’