Trump Sends a Cajun to Press the Message to Greenland | The American Spectator

On Sunday, President Trump showed that even during the week of Christmas he’s still capable of setting political fires in all the most interesting places when he tapped Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, as a special envoy to Greenland.

And Landry amplified Trump’s message with one of his own:

Thank you @realDonaldTrump! It’s an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S. This in no way affects my position as Governor of Louisiana!

— Governor Jeff Landry (@LAGovJeffLandry) December 22, 2025

As I noted Monday morning at The Hayride, there is a certain logic to sending Landry to reason with the Greenlanders. The governor, after all, is a Cajun. And Cajuns have a story to tell about European colonial powers that is not altogether unrelatable where Greenlanders are concerned:

[T]he Greenlanders are a bunch of people living in the Western Hemisphere who have, and currently are, been treated like shit by a European colonial power which is now an insignificant and declining country.

Louisiana had France and it had Spain, both of which abused this place and the people in it. The French tried to populate Louisiana with criminals and prostitutes, which probably accounts for a lot, but it also used Louisiana as a dumping ground for religious minorities the Crown didn’t care for. Additionally, the British dumped the Cajuns on Louisiana when they threw them out of Nova Scotia to make room for the Scots they were expelling from Scotland.

I’m pointing this out in no small part because I’m half Cajun and half Scottish, and so when I consider France and Britain as a pair of inconsequential, declining European countries I’m not unhappy to do so given how they treated my ancestors.

Landry has a similar story to tell.

And he’ll be telling it to a bunch of people who are currently being dumped on and ignored by an even more inconsequential European pipsqueak power than the French or British ever were. Denmark is essentially Copenhagen and its suburbs. Get in a car and you can drive from one end of Denmark to another in generally less time than it’ll take to drive from Shreveport to Grand Isle. And there are barely more people in Denmark than there are in Louisiana. This is like saying Louisiana would have all of Central America as a colony. It’s hard to imagine the people at the state capitol in Baton Rouge would have a clue what to do with that territory.

But the appointment of Landry to carry Trump’s messaging initiative to the Greenlanders was not well received by the Euros. Not in the least:

“We have said it very clearly before. Now we say it again: you cannot annex other countries,” Denmark Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said in a joint statement Monday.

“Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders, and the US should not take over Greenland,” the two leaders added. “We expect respect for our common territorial integrity.”

Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told Danish television Monday that he was “deeply upset” by Landry’s appointment. Rasmussen said he planned to summon PayPal co-founder Ken Howery, the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, to register his disapproval.

“Preserving the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark, its sovereignty and the inviability of its borders is essential for the European Union,” European Union spokesman Anouar El Anouni said Monday.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry also slammed Landry’s appointment — which appears to have caught European nations by surprise.

“The future of Greenland lies in the hands of Greenlanders,” German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Kathrin Deschauer said in a statement.

There is an interesting dynamic here. Both Trump and Landry, in their public messaging about the appointment of the latter as a special envoy, categorized the effort as, in Landry’s words, making Greenland part of the United States. But an annexation is highly unlikely to be what happens in Greenland.

And the formulation used by both Trump and Landry, together with the European howling about annexation, has created an interesting middle ground that happens to be where the vast majority of Greenlanders are.

The point of all this is to do exactly what Nielsen and Deschauer have said — which is that Greenlanders should be in charge of Greenland.

And if Greenlanders are in charge of Greenland’s future, they’ll choose independence from Denmark.

But everybody knows that Greenland, population 57,000, can’t defend a territory of an essentially equal size to the land sold in the Louisiana Purchase. For that matter, Denmark can’t defend it either. An independent Greenland must partner with a strong ally, and the options are the United States, China, and Russia.

China and Russia won’t necessarily give the Greenlanders an option, it’s reasonable to assume.

The Danes, who are huffing and puffing as loudly as they can over the forceful language of the American president and now the Louisiana governor, can only defend Greenland with the American military, and that’s only possible so long as NATO exists.

And they, the Germans and lots of the rest of the Euros, continue to advocate that NATO — by which they mean the United States — engage in a more and more kinetic war with Russia over Ukraine.

Maybe there’s a grand bargain here. Maybe the bargain is that the United States will continue supporting the Ukrainian war effort — supporting Ukrainian independence from Russia, let’s say — in exchange for the Europeans supporting the independence of Greenland.

Which ultimately means Greenland brokering its own alliance, and consequently an economic development deal with the United States. Without Denmark getting to rake off anything from that deal.

The Danes would argue that they’re subsidizing the Greenlanders and it would be unjust to have that territory taken from them. Except that’s a very poor argument, and it’s actually an indictment of European socialism as it’s practiced in Denmark. After all, Greenland is 98 percent of the land area of the Danish empire and yet it’s utterly undeveloped despite its vast mineral wealth. In fact, Greenland might be the richest untapped territory on the planet not counting Antarctica. But rather than sharing in that bounty, the Greenlanders are forced to settle for a welfare check from Copenhagen.

Pry them loose from the Danes, which, based on election and poll results, is a plausible and agreeable enterprise, and opportunity to do both good and well abounds.

For Americans and Greenlanders alike.

Is this an affront to Danish sovereignty? Perhaps. The question thus arises: What Danish sovereignty? The Danes are dependent on the United States for military protection and they’re subservient to the European Union on both political and economic fronts.

And with most Greenlanders openly telling Denmark they’d rather go their own way, it’s hard to understand what legs Copenhagen is standing on.

The Greenland imbroglio isn’t just a sidelight. It’s part of a broader reexamination — overdue, at that — of our relationship with Europe and exactly why the post–World War II status quo remains.

In the wake of the EU’s attempts to fine X for choosing to be a free speech platform, for example. And in the consistent attempts by EU politicians to prolong the Ukraine war rather than let it move to a ceasefire. And the persistence of the European governing class in importing non-European migrants to dilute their own peoples’ power at the ballot box. And in the suppression of the popular political will when those people do flex their muscles on Election Day.

And in the progressive persecutions of political dissidents on that continent — not by the Russians, but by British and German and French and other political elites.

Why shouldn’t we seek to sever Greenland from the Danish yoke, and then offer the Greenlanders more than Denmark ever could? And why should we care about the effeminate screeching of European politicians taking time out from screwing over their own people.

Landry has a well-deserved reputation as a bull in a china shop. Let him rumble with the Danes. It’ll be great sport. And it might hasten the day when he, or some other envoy, is negotiating a mineral rights, military security and economic development deal pulling Greenland out of the cold shadows Denmark has held it in all this time.

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