{"id":15863,"date":"2026-02-17T05:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T05:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/15863\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T05:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T05:13:12","slug":"inside-lindsey-grahams-greenland-meltdown-in-munich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/15863\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Lindsey Graham\u2019s Greenland Meltdown in Munich"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday morning, Sen. Thom Tillis burst into the CODEL control room in the Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich, where, every February, the grandees of the transatlantic world gather to determine the pressing security matters of the day. He was pissed. \u201cSome people have been going around saying, Who gives a shit about who owns Greenland,\u201d Tillis said, bouncing on his toes and browsing the selection of available snacks. \u201cWell, you know who gives a shit? The Indigenous people of Greenland\u2014and the Indigenous people of North Carolina, whom we\u2019ve been fighting to have recognized for over 130 years!\u201d And that, he said, \u201cis why I\u2019m wearing my YOLO bolo\u201d\u2014a massive, sparkly medallion with blue and pink beading around a Senate seal at its center. The Lumbee Indians of North Carolina had given it to Tillis after the senator secured<\/a> full federal recognition of their tribe in December.<\/p>\n

Tillis was clearly talking about Sen. Lindsey Graham, who had made the offending remark<\/a> to Politico on Friday\u2014declaring, specifically, \u201cWho gives a shit who owns Greenland. I don\u2019t.\u201d The comment landed like a bomb in the middle of a delicate family therapy session, and on Saturday, many of his colleagues were on clean-up duty once again. It wasn\u2019t just Tillis who was furious. The CODEL had arrived in Munich with the goal of reassuring America\u2019s European partners that the U.S. still cared about their alliance. And while President Trump seemed to have publicly moved on from his comments that he wouldn\u2019t rule out military force to take Greenland, the Europeans very much had not.<\/p>\n

In fact, the episode hung like a dark cloud over every meeting the senators and House members had with European leaders. The Danes and Greenlanders were particularly sore. \u201cThey went through a lot,\u201d said Vermont Sen. Peter Welch, still indignant on their behalf. \u201cIt\u2019s real and it\u2019s raw. I mean, they thought that when their electricity went down\u201d\u2014in what turned out to be a weather-related incident<\/a> in late January\u2014\u201cthat was the predicate to an [American] attack.\u201d \u201cIt has affected them profoundly,\u201d Sen. Mark Kelly told me, his face pained. \u201cKids are scared. They\u2019re opening up their windows to look out for airplanes and ships coming. That\u2019s horrible\u2014and it\u2019s coming from the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

For lawmakers like Tillis, who was also part of last month\u2019s CODEL to Denmark and Greenland, the sentiment was not new. Even senators who had been to war zones and refugee camps were traumatized by that trip, according to staffers who accompanied them, because of the obvious pain their country was inflicting on such a close ally. (The largest<\/a> Fourth of July celebration outside of the U.S. is held every year in Denmark.) \u201cWhat was so startling was how dehumanizing, insulting, and painful this was,\u201d Rep. Sarah McBride recalled of that trip. \u201cThere were people coming up to us in the street, grown adults pleading with us like they would with a hostage taker.\u201d<\/p>\n

January\u2019s trip to Denmark had been an effort to reassure the Danes and Greenlanders that, regardless of what the president was saying, the American people and their representatives in Congress weren\u2019t going to stand for it. (During that trip, Tillis gave Jens-Frederik Nielsen, the prime minister of Greenland, one of the Lumbee-made YOLO bolos from his personal collection as a sign of solidarity.)<\/p>\n

A month later, American members of Congress discovered, it became clear how much repair work still needed to be done. In Munich, McBride said, the Greenland crisis\u2014which is what the Europeans were calling it\u2014was still very much \u201cthe elephant in the room.\u201d Rep. Mike Baumgartner, the sole Republican House member who went to the conference after Mike Johnson canceled the House CODEL, told me he was taken aback by just how much Greenland had changed things. \u201cI think the Greenland episode was probably more jarring to the Europeans than some people back on the Hill knew,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

Convincing European partners that they could still count on the U.S., however, proved hard going. \u201cThe trust just isn\u2019t there after Greenland,\u201d said Senator Jacky Rosen. Senator Andy Kim agreed. \u201cThe damage has been done,\u201d he told me. \u201cAnd some of it is irreparable.\u201d Meanwhile, it wasn\u2019t lost on European leaders that promises meant little coming from a neutered legislative branch. \u201cThe reassurances don\u2019t work when you don\u2019t have that power anymore. It worked in Trump I, but not anymore,\u201d Senator Ruben Gallego told me. He added that it wasn\u2019t just about Greenland. Trump had also infuriated allies by insulting the NATO soldiers who\u2019d fought and died alongside U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan\u2014something Gallego, a former Marine, experienced firsthand. \u201cI tell them we have elections coming up, but they say the proof is in the pudding,\u201d he said. I asked him whether he would believe vows of congressional support if he were in the Europeans\u2019 shoes. \u201cNo,\u201d Gallego responded, shaking his head.<\/p>\n

\u201cLots of F-Bombs\u201d<\/p>\n

The only member of the CODEL completely unwilling to engage in the makeup session, however, was Graham. The South Carolina senator, who used to lead a delegation to Munich with his old friend Sen. John McCain, was once Mr. Transatlantic Alliance; and, after McCain\u2019s death, he was the foreign policy graybeard in the Senate. But Graham, once a gold-standard neocon, has revealed himself to be an ideologically flexible careerist, consistently siding with Trump, who ran as an isolationist and governs as an imperialist.<\/p>\n

Even as other senators with foreign policy chops have risen through the ranks, Graham has continued to position himself as America\u2019s elder statesman at Munich, holding on to his power over the Senate CODEL as if it were a magic amulet. Senator Kelly told me that Graham refused for weeks to respond to his request to join the group this year\u2014perhaps because Kelly had made fun<\/a> of Graham on The Daily Show. In the end, Kelly tagged along with the sidecar Senate CODEL, led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Tillis. (Graham\u2019s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

But Graham\u2019s Senate colleagues have grown increasingly exasperated with him. When I asked Mark Warner about Graham\u2019s comments, he said, \u201cNever a dull moment!\u201d then rolled his eyes in frustration and walked away. \u201cIt used to be charming,\u201d said another senator, who didn\u2019t want to be quoted. \u201cWas it charming this time? No, because there\u2019s raw sensitivity. I think a number of us would suggest to Lindsey that he might want to dial back the Lindsey-isms.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that was before the meeting. On Saturday afternoon, after a good half-day of American lawmakers trying to calm jittery European nerves, Graham and a number of other senators and members of Congress met with Nielsen and the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen. According to several sources who were in the room, as well as others who were briefed on what happened, Graham completely unloaded on both prime ministers. The gist, according to two people in the room, was that if President Trump wanted Greenland, he\u2019d take it, and there wasn\u2019t much they could do about it. They would just have to hand over the Arctic island and deal with it. \u201cLots of F-bombs,\u201d said one person in attendance. \u201cPicture Graham on his worst TV day,\u201d said one source familiar. According to a third source, he was quite \u201ccombative.\u201d Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who was in the meeting, was so offended that she got up and left. People told me she looked visibly shaken afterward. (Slotkin\u2019s office declined to comment.)<\/p>\n

If anything, what Graham\u2019s CODEL achieved in Munich was not reassurance, but a reminder that the Greenland crisis could be revived at any moment, and perhaps hadn\u2019t even passed at all. Frederiksen said as much to the BBC on Saturday afternoon, as news of this meeting tore through the CODEL room. \u201cI think the desire from the U.S. president is exactly the same,\u201d she said<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019s very serious about this.\u201d On the other hand, the trip did accomplish Lindsey Graham\u2019s primary and perennial mission<\/a> of keeping Lindsey Graham relevant.<\/p>\n

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