Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Jesper Møller Sørensen on Friday clapped back at President Trump’s remarks about NATO troops who served in Afghanistan, saying “Denmark answered” following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“After 9/11, the U.S. called. Denmark answered,” Sørensen posted on the social platform X. “Thousands of Danish troops served in Helmand—on the front line. We lost more soldiers per capita than even the United States. That was solidarity. We stood with America then—and we still do. I witnessed our brave men & women during my 1.5 years in Afghanistan.”

Sørensen’s post included a photo of the ambassador flanked by two U.S. soldiers, with a U.S. Marine Corps Osprey helicopter behind them.

Trump said the U.S. “never needed” non-U.S. NATO troops in an interview with Fox Business Network while at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday.

“You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that, and they did — they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines,” Trump said.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte confronted Trump earlier this week about his comments, telling the president that Europe did respond and joined the U.S. in Afghanistan.

“As you know, for every two Americans who paid the ultimate price, there was one soldier from another NATO country who did not come back to his family — from the Netherlands, from Denmark, particularly from other countries,” Rutte said.

The Trump comment caused a firestorm in Great Britain, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer and politicians from different parties along with former soldiers and the parents of fallen military members criticized the remarks.

A spokesperson for Starmer said Trump “was wrong to diminish the role of NATO troops” in Afghanistan.

Conservative Party opposition leader Kemi Badenoch called Trump’s remark “a disgrace,” and said “throwaway comments” weaken U.S. relations with other NATO countries, the BBC reported.

Reform UK leader and Trump ally Nigel Farage said the president was “wrong.”

“When the decision was made to go into Afghanistan, we went in with America, the coalition of the willing,” Farage said in a video he shared on X. “We stayed by America for the whole 20 years. We proportionally spent the same money as America. We lost the same number of lives as America pro rata. And the same actually applies to Denmark and other countries too. So it’s not quite fair.”

Prince Harry also criticized Trump’s remark. He said NATO countries “answered the call” when the U.S. invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty following the Sept. 11 attacks, himself having served as a British captain on two tours in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2012.

“I served there,” Prince Harry said in a statement obtained by The Telegraph. “I made lifelong friends there. And I lost friends there.”

“Mothers and fathers buried sons and daughters,” he added. “Children were left without a parent. Families are left carrying the cost.”

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