Dave Davies

How did Trump respond to these military steps by all of these allied European countries?

Now, you do write that even though this isn't being talked about actively now, there are ongoing influencing operations at the direction of Trump.

What exactly are they?

And we should note that Danish officials responded strongly to the notion that getting sick in Greenland was a death sentence, right?

I mean, there is a health care system.

Mm-hmm.

So again, we're talking about the governor of Louisiana, the sitting governor of Louisiana is Trump's special envoy to Greenland, Jeff Landry.

One of the other things you write about is that he traveled to Greenland uninvited to attend a business conference with the instruction of just trying to, what, make some friends?

We need to take another break here.

Let me reintroduce you.

We are speaking with Ben Taub.

He is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

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

We'll continue our conversation after this short break.

This is Fresh Air.

You've made several reporting trips to Greenland.

You spent a lot of time there doing reporting on things other than this acquisition effort.

But what's your sense of – from looking at the media there, the public debate, the online discourse of how the threat of an American invasion translates into what they might experience, what their own perceptions of this are?

In some ways, it sort of seems like such an abstract and kind of an idea.

I mean, abstract, and as the title of your story says, ludicrous idea.