Second lady Usha Vance will travel to Greenland this week, the White House announced Sunday, becoming the latest U.S. official to visit the Danish territory as President Donald Trump ramps up calls for U.S. ownership.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright and national security adviser Mike Waltz will join Vance, the vice president’s wife, as part of the U.S. delegation, two administration sources confirmed to NBC News.
Vance, who is taking one of her two sons, will visit historical sites, learn about Greenlandic heritage and attend a national dogsled race, the White House said. The trip will begin Thursday.
The officials will embark on the trip as Trump sharpens his yearslong proposal to take over Greenland, a mineral-rich island that houses a U.S. military base in a region of growing geopolitical importance.
Vance said in a video Sunday that her visit will double as an effort to celebrate and strengthen “the long history of mutual respect and cooperation between” the United States and Greenland.
The New York Times first reported Vance’s trip.
The U.S. delegation’s visit has drawn the ire of outgoing Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte B. Egede, who questioned whether the trip was a show of force meant to intimidate local leaders.
“We are now at a level where it can in no way be characterized as a harmless visit from a politician’s wife,” Egede told the national newspaper Sermitsiaq on Sunday. “What is the security adviser doing in Greenland? The only purpose is to show a demonstration of power to us, and the signal is not to be misunderstood.”
Representatives for the White House and the Energy Department did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Trump floated the idea of purchasing Greenland during his first term in office but has recently grown more aggressive in making the pitch. He has called ownership of Greenland “an absolute necessity” and has refused to rule out using military force to acquire it.
“We need Greenland for national security. One way or the other we’re going to get it,” said in his address to a joint session of Congress this month.
He offered a similar rationale during an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte this month, when he suggested the military alliance may have to aid his effort to annex the territory.
“We have a lot of our favorite players cruising around the coast, and we have to be careful,” Trump said. “I think that’s why NATO might be, have to get involved in a way, because we really need Greenland for national security.”
Greenland is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, which is a member of NATO.
Greenlandic and Danish leaders have consistently rejected Trump’s proposal.
In January, Donald Trump Jr., accompanied by right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, traveled to Greenland for a visit his father characterized as being in support of a “deal that must happen.”
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