The US and Greenland would both gain plenty from closer ties
Trump isn't the first US president to try and buy Greenland. And he has even more reason to covet it than Truman did.
President elect Trump’s views on buying Greenland are rational, strategic, and probably well thought out. His refusal to rule out force to control the world’s largest island may be arrogant, insulting, neo-colonialist bluster, but he’s very successfully put the possibility of changing Greenland’s status at the top of the world’s headlines.
Because many people think that Trump is a bad joke, they mistake the mangled syntax that emerges from his mouth as nonsense. It may frequently be unpleasant, but it’s not idiocy. President Truman tried to buy Greenland from Denmark in 1953 for $100 million in gold and that was neither a joke nor idiocy.
Truman’s rationale then was similar to Trump’s now – Greenland’s geography – but Trump has even more reason to covet it now due to the wealth of natural resources to be found there including many of the metals needed for 21st century technology.