The Trump that went out to the Cold
TetleysTLDR: The Summary
Donald Trump’s fixation with Greenland isn’t just bizarre, it’s deranged. He looks at melting glaciers: a planetary emergency that threatens to drown cities and displace millions and sees nothing but dollar signs. Every sheet of ice that collapses is, in his warped mind, is a transaction opportunity, another acre he can flog off to oil drillers, miners, or his billionaire mates. This isn’t climate denial, it’s climate profiteering. Trump actually wants the catastrophe to accelerate, because catastrophe is his business model. Forget saving the planet, he’s salivating at the prospect of carving up Greenland like a Trump golf course, complete with gilded resorts built on the bones of a dying ecosystem. It’s not just reckless; it’s unhinged. Trump doesn’t merely ignore climate disaster, he cheers it on, because in his twisted logic, every apocalypse is just another real estate deal waiting to happen. The man is fucking insane.
TetleysTLDR: The article
This week Denmark hauled in the top US diplomat in Copenhagen after revelations that American operatives linked to Donald Trump were running covert influence campaigns in Greenland.
At least three US citizens were reportedly compiling lists of 'US friendly' Greenlanders and Trump critics, while cultivating ties with local politicians and business leaders. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen denounced this as unacceptable, while Greenland’s own leaders stressed their autonomy and strategic importance in the Arctic.
On the surface it looked like a bizarre diplomatic quarrel, but in truth it is the exposed nerve of something far bigger: Trump’s long-standing obsession with Greenland, and his vision of exploiting climate catastrophe to carve up the Arctic for profit.
Donald Trump Jnr on a 'Factfinding' visit to Nuuk, Greenland's capital in Jan 2025.
Donald Trump has always been a grotesque caricature of capitalist excess, but his latest fixation on Greenland is a new low even by his standards. This is not just another property deal, another hotel with his name slapped on the front in tacky gold lettering. This is the deliberate exploitation of catastrophic climate collapse for profit, the naked attempt to annex a sovereign people’s land, and the clearest signal yet that under Trumpism, the American right sees melting glaciers not as a global emergency but as a business opportunity.
Trump has never hidden his lust for Greenland. During his presidency he openly floated the idea of 'buying' the island, a colonial-era fantasy that enraged Denmark and made Greenlanders laugh out loud. But behind the bombast sits a cold calculation. The Arctic is heating four times faster than the rest of the planet, and as the Greenland ice shelf retreats, vast new frontiers of oil, gas, and rare earth minerals are being laid bare. Where scientists view with horror the collapse of one of Earth’s great regulators of climate, Trump and his backers see a bonanza: a land grab dressed up as economic destiny.
What’s Actually Happening: Trump, Greenland, and Rare Earths
1. Historical and Renewed Statements
- Donald Trump first floated the idea of purchasing Greenland in 2019. Though widely dismissed as absurd, he’s since revived the idea in his second term, describing Greenland as an 'absolute necessity' for US security and strategic dominance. Vox
- Recent legislation, like the “Make Greenland Great Again Act” reflects continued intent: a US House bill introduced in January 2025 would permit the US to acquire Greenland, pending congressional review. Wikipedia
- Trump has also suggested he wouldn't rule out using military means to exert control, though such remarks have been met with global alarm. Wikipedia
2. Strategic and Resource Motives
- Greenland holds vast deposits of rare-earth minerals (used in batteries and electronics), along with uranium and potentially oil, plus geopolitical importance via Arctic shipping routes and advanced defence locations like the US operated Thule Air Base. Vox
- Melting ice is making these resources more accessible, though it also risks catastrophic sea-level rise, creating a deeply ironic and alarming connection between climate destruction and resource exploitation. Vox
3. Influence Operations & Diplomatic Fallout
- In August 2025, Denmark summoned the US envoy after reports that individuals with ties to Trump were conducting covert influence operations in Greenland, identifying pro-Trump locals and potentially fostering secessionist sentiments. The Washington Post
- Earlier, in May, Denmark raised similar concerns when US intelligence agencies were reportedly directed to monitor Greenland’s independence movement and attitudes toward US resource extraction. Wikipedia
4. Financial Incentives & Local Response
- Around four months ago, reports uncovered that the Trump administration considered offering Greenlanders an annual $10,000 subsidy in lieu of Denmark’s US$600 million yearly support, part of a strategy to win favour for prospective annexation. People.com
- Both Danish and Greenlandic leaders have fiercely opposed these moves. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called it insulting, and Greenland’s leaders have consistently reiterated: “Greenland is ours… we are not for sale” People
5. Local and International Pushback
- A January 2025 poll showed 78% of Danes oppose selling Greenland to the US, with nearly half viewing the US as a significant threat. Wikipedia
- Greenland’s push toward independence continues, with strong political resistance locally to US overtures. European allies and NATO members have also publicly criticised the idea, noting that it destablises the whole alliance. Vox
Thule US Air Force base in Greenland.
What Denmark calls interference, Trump’s clique sees as a head start on staking claims before the ice finally gives way. This is the logic of the fossil-fuel death cult: don’t just deny climate change, monetise it. Trump and his allies have turned climate breakdown into a speculative gamble, banking on disaster to secure leverage over a resource-hungry world.
Greenland holds huge deposits of uranium, zinc, iron ore, and the rare earths that power smartphones, batteries, and weapons systems: all increasingly valuable in the global scramble for supply chains. If the Arctic becomes navigable year-round, it will also unlock shipping lanes that slice weeks off trade routes.
For Trump, this isn’t about sovereignty, democracy, or the rights of Greenlanders. It’s about turning the collapse of the ice shelf into the new oil rush, with his brand of gangster capitalism waiting on the sidelines to cash in. Denmark knows this game, which is why its intelligence agencies have been sounding the alarm. A Wall Street Journal report earlier this year revealed that US intelligence was instructed to gather information on Greenland’s independence movement and its attitudes toward resource extraction.
Independence has long been a live issue in Greenland, more than 80% support it in principle, though few want it if it means lower living standards. Trump’s operatives appear to be fishing in those waters, hoping to peel Greenland away from Denmark’s orbit and make it easier prey for American corporate interests. The timing is no accident. With climate collapse accelerating, the prize is becoming too tempting to resist, and Trump’s camp wants to be first in line.
Trump Force One in Nuuk: January 2025
The scandal goes far beyond Trump. It exposes the broader rot of a political class that sees catastrophe not as a threat but as an investment opportunity. This is capitalism’s final frontier: a system so addicted to extraction that it can only imagine profit in planetary breakdown. For decades climate science has warned of rising seas, melting permafrost, and collapsing ecosystems. Instead of averting that disaster, the fossil lobby and its political mouthpieces have engineered a world where the very devastation they caused becomes the next boom. Trump is just the most shameless version of this racket, a man so brazen he can look at the drowning of Miami, the burning of California, and the disintegration of the Greenland ice shelf, and see nothing but dollar signs.
The cynicism here is staggering. The very glacial melt that threatens to drown coastlines, displace millions, and destabilise the climate system is precisely what Trump is banking on to make Greenland 'viable' for extraction. It is capitalism cannibalising the planet in real time. This is eco-barbarism, climate change not as a crisis to be solved but as a cash cow to be milked.
Greenland is melting. Climate change is happening four times faster in the Artic than anywhere else.
This is the capitalism of vultures: literally banking on the ice sheets to die so they can strip the carcass bare. It is the same logic that fuels wars, pandemics, and housing crises: every disaster is an opportunity to profit. Trump’s fixation on Greenland isn’t an aberration; it’s the purest expression of a system that can only expand by devouring its own life-support systems.
Greenland should be a warning to the world. If Trump’s people are already running influence operations on the island, imagine what Trump is capable of. Forget half-hearted climate accords or green investment pledges. The Arctic would be opened like a carcass, parcelled out to energy giants, with Greenland reduced to a mining colony in all but name. And while Trump dreams of his name etched across the Arctic Circle, the rest of us would inherit the floods, fires, and famine his profiteering guarantees.
This is why Greenland matters. This is where disaster capitalism becomes disaster fascism and fuck the planet as long as there is a buck to be made. It is the test case for whether humanity will resist the corporate vultures circling the climate crisis, or whether we let men like Trump turn catastrophe into capital.
He isn’t just a president with delusions of empire; he is the walking embodiment of a system that would rather watch the world burn, or melt, than leave a single ounce of mineral wealth in the ground. And for that, he deserves not diplomacy or indulgence, but to be named for what he is: a piece of shit snake oil salesman trying to sell off the Arctic as it dies.
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