Dave Davies

This is Fresh Air.

I'm Dave Davies.

At a White House news conference in April, as President Donald Trump was discussing his displeasure at our European allies over the war in Iran, he said this about his problem with the NATO allies.

That's President Donald Trump in April.

Trump's campaign to acquire the territory of Greenland from Denmark through purchase, threat, negotiation or even military action is one of the stranger episodes of his presidency.

And while Trump hasn't spoken publicly about the issue in a while, our guest, New Yorker staff writer Ben Taub says it hasn't gone away.

In a new article, he writes that there are ongoing influence operation at Trump's direction to keep the possibility alive.

Taub's reporting traces Trump's Greenland project from its inception in 2018 to the present day, a campaign that's yielded some comical moments as Americans sought to woo allies and wield influence in the territory with just 57,000 people.

Taub also reveals some of the private actors who've helped to drive the process, players motivated by financial gain, notoriety, or ideology.

Ben Taub has been contributing to The New Yorker since 2015.

Among his many journalistic honors, he won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his work on the lasting effects on former detainees and guards of American abuses in Guantanamo Bay.

His new article in The New Yorker is titled Inside the Ludicrous, Deadly Serious Plan to Take Over Greenland.

Ben Taub, welcome back to Fresh Air.

Thank you very much, Dave.

I want to begin with a moment just before President Trump was inaugurated in 2025.

When his son Donald Trump Jr.

and the late Charlie Kirk took a trip to Greenland to try and build some support among locals for this effort of the United States acquisition, how did it go for these guys?

Right.

And one of the details that I love here is that you tracked down a high school student who had had an interaction here.

You want to tell us about that?