Mark Landler

Thanks.

It's great to be back.

Well, as you said, we don't know a great deal.

There appears to be the outlines of an agreement under which the U.S.

would perhaps be granted some form of ownership or sovereignty, if you will, over small pockets of land in Greenland, probably U.S.

military bases.

And it appears that that would be something that would allow

President Trump to claim what he has wanted all along, which is some American ownership of Greenland, while for the Danish government maintaining the reality of this situation, which is that this is Danish territory.

So it appears to be something that Mark Rutte

the NATO Secretary General is trying to craft that will somehow mollify Trump while sort of preserving Denmark's claim over Greenland, which was shaping up to be an unbreakable conflict between the United States and Denmark.

Mm-hmm.

How it all shakes out, very unclear.

For those of us that have covered Trump in the past, we know that these dramas tend to have multiple acts.

And what you find out in Act One often changes radically into Act Two and Act Three.

But it does appear on the face of it that the Europeans have managed to edge Trump away from, you know, a rather dangerous cliff edge on this whole issue.

Well, I guess I would answer that on two levels.

I think Donald Trump wants Greenland, in a sense, coming from his background as a real estate developer.

He wants to acquire territory for the United States.

Greenland would be a larger new acquisition for the United States in square miles than the Louisiana Purchase, than Alaska, than some of the other major expansions of the United States.

So that's on a very visceral level.