The U.S. has — by far — the world’s largest defense budget, spending $948 billion last year. Its armed forces have 1.3 million personnel — some of them currently stationed in Greenland. Denmark, for its part, last year spent $9.9 billion, has only 17,000 soldiers, and most of its heavy land-warfare equipment has been donated to Ukraine.
This sort of thing can easily turn into a self fulfilling prophecy. He might’ve quipped it as trolling initially, but now that the media picked it up as a serious thing that gives legs to the idea. And it could also be the case that he blurted something out that is an actual plan they’re hatching. It actually makes a certain kind of sense from US perspective as Greenland is strategically placed and resource rich. If the US is now retrenching, they’re going to be carving out their sphere of influence.
Important to note Greenland is not in the best graces of the US it seems. Recently released NVIDIA chips tier ban list of countries flags it as not favored like most of the EU. And this was done by Biden. Not Republicans, Biden administration.
But that won’t matter if US actually annexes it.