{"id":292495,"date":"2026-01-19T17:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T17:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/292495\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T17:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T17:29:10","slug":"its-like-fifth-graders-bullying-the-small-guy-in-the-corner-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/292495\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s like fifth graders bullying the small guy in the corner\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Henrik Bager, a Danish soldier who served with Americans in Iraq<\/a> and Afghanistan<\/a>, said US president Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s vow to take Greenland<\/a> from Denmark<\/a> and his insults about Denmark\u2019s military were \u201ca punch to the gut\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rasmus Jarlov, a voluble centre-right member of the Danish parliament and the chair of its defence committee, said \u201cwe know full well that the Americans can destroy us\u201d, but should Trump, who has not ruled out military force, attack a fellow Nato ally, \u201cof course we will fight back\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the next breath, Jarlov said it was \u201cabsolutely so weird to be uttering something like that\u201d.<\/p>\n

Casper O Jensen, a Danish pollster who has lived in the United States<\/a> and calls it \u201cclose to his heart\u201d, sounded like a jilted lover. \u201cI thought we had a really good thing going on,\u201d he said. \u201cApparently not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ThousandsThousands of Danes protest in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Saturday against Donald Trump\u2019s stated aim to take over Greenland. Photograph: Hilary Swift\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

These are bleak times in Copenhagen, where Danes say they feel betrayed, bewildered and frightened by Trump\u2019s threats to take over Greenland, the semi-autonomous Danish territory and a source of national identity and pride. Greenland, 50 times the size of Denmark, has long made the tiny Nordic nation more of a player on the world stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not small when you add Greenland,\u201d said David Trads, a political commentator and the author of three books on the United States, including his most recent, America Turns the Clock Back. \u201cIt makes us more important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s view is that the United States needs to take over Greenland because Russia<\/a> and China<\/a> pose a security threat in the Arctic, and because the island is essential for the \u201cGolden Dome\u201d missile shield he wants to build to protect the US.<\/p>\n

Denmark, Nato<\/a> allies and most security experts say Trump already has all the access to Greenland he needs, given existing treaties and the willingness of Denmark, long one of the most pro-American countries in Europe, to do anything \u2013 short of giving up Greenland \u2013 that the president wants.<\/p>\n

This past week in Copenhagen, where wall-to-wall television coverage of the crisis seemed to match the mood of the dark Scandinavian winter, Danes pored over every utterance from Trump.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018I\u2019ve not felt so insecure before\u2019: Greenlanders prepare for crisis amid a lack of official adviceOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018With Irish people I feel understood, a connection\u2019: In Greenland, talk of US takeover is deeply triggeringOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

By Saturday, thousands of Danes had packed Copenhagen\u2019s City Hall Square before marching to the US embassy in protest, while hundreds demonstrated in Nuuk<\/a>, Greenland\u2019s capital. <\/p>\n

Hours later, Trump said he was putting new tariffs on Denmark and other European nations<\/a> until they come to the negotiating table to sell him Greenland.<\/p>\n

Danes have been particularly stunned by Trump\u2019s taunts that Denmark relies on \u201ctwo dog sleds\u201d to defend the Arctic island.<\/p>\n

\"HenrikHenrik Bager, a Danish soldier who served as a Company Sgt Maj with US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, shows a photo of himself in uniform, at home in Graested, Denmark. Photograph: Hilary Swift\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like fifth graders bullying the small guy in the corner,\u201d said Bager, the Danish soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Danes in his unit died during his 2009 deployment to Helmand province in Afghanistan, he said, and the rhetoric from the White House hurts.<\/p>\n

Adam Price, the creator of Borgen, a Danish television political drama that became an international hit, set its fourth and final season in Greenland. In episodes that aired in 2022 in the US, a geopolitical struggle unfolds between the US, China and Russia after large reserves of oil are discovered on the island.<\/p>\n

Price likes to take real events and push them beyond what has actually happened. But in an interview last week, he said that, had he pitched a storyline to Netflix that an American president was vowing to get Greenland from Denmark \u201cone way or another\u201d \u2013 the exact words of Trump \u2013 \u201cI would have been laughed out of the pitching room.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would have said, \u2018It\u2019s too much, it is too crazy,\u2019\u201d Price said in his Copenhagen office, where a large photograph of sled dogs and icebergs in Greenland covers one wall. \u201cI mean, you wouldn\u2019t have an American president that would actually threaten a Nato ally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AdamAdam Price, creator of the hit Danish political drama TV series Borgen, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Photograph: Hilary Swift\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

Many Danes believe Trump wants to own Greenland because, as he put it to The New York Times in an interview this month, \u201cthat\u2019s what I feel is psychologically needed for success\u201d.<\/p>\n

Aaja Chemnitz, one of two members of parliament who represent Greenland, said in an interview: \u201cMaybe you should take it up with his therapist if it\u2019s a question of making sure that he feels better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chemnitz, who said Greenlanders were having trouble sleeping for fear of an American invasion, was host last week to a bipartisan congressional delegation led by Democratic senator Chris Coons to Denmark. In her view, Trump is more interested in the minerals and oil in Greenland than anything else.<\/p>\n

That sentiment was echoed by Oliver Haagensen (21), a medical student at Aarhus University, who was skating recently at an outdoor rink in Copenhagen\u2019s Christianshavn neighbourhood. Like everyone else, he was keeping up with the news on Trump. \u201cHe knows that Russia and China want the minerals and oil, and he wants to get there first,\u201d Haagensen said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Denmark and Greenland united in mass protests against Trump annexation threatsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

There was some short-lived relief in Copenhagen after a meeting on Wednesday in Washington where Denmark\u2019s foreign minister, Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen, emerged from talks with US vice-president JD Vance<\/a> and secretary of state Marco Rubio<\/a>. Rasmussen said that although a \u201cfundamental disagreement\u201d remained with Trump and that the American president \u201chas this wish of conquering Greenland\u201d, there would be a \u201cworking group\u201d to continue talks.<\/p>\n

But on Thursday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the Danes and Greenlanders had agreed \u201cto continue to have technical talks on the acquisition of Greenland\u201d, which Denmark and Greenland said was not the case at all.<\/p>\n

Trads, the political commentator, had been sceptical that the meeting would produce anything. Over coffee near the Danish parliament last week, he said that the only thing Denmark had on its side against Trump was time.<\/p>\n

The Danish government hopes that Trump\u2019s party will lose the midterm elections, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that doesn\u2019t happen, then we\u2019re just waiting for the three years to pass,\u201d Trads said. \u201cIt\u2019s a long time, but we don\u2019t have anything else. So that\u2019s the whole tactic, just to make sure it goes on and on and on, and somehow he is preoccupied with something else.\u201d <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Henrik Bager, a Danish soldier who served with Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, said US president Donald Trump\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,381,382,356,18,4893,13,14,17768,6,19,17,12175,11,12,15,16,6587,5,4897,550,7,8,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-292495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-denmark","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-eu","15":"tag-featured-news","16":"tag-featurednews","17":"tag-greenland","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-ie","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-jd-vance","22":"tag-latest-news","23":"tag-latestnews","24":"tag-main-news","25":"tag-mainnews","26":"tag-marco-rubio","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organisation-nato","29":"tag-russia","30":"tag-top-stories","31":"tag-topstories","32":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115922951453098851","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}