The Pentagon has not received any orders to send a U.S. hospital ship to Greenland, despite Donald Trump bizarrely claiming one is “on its way.”
The 79-year-old president drew ridicule after posting on Truth Social on Saturday that the U.S. is going to send a “great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there.”
Adding to the confusion, the post came shortly after the Danish military announced that a U.S. sailor was receiving urgent medical treatment in a Greenland hospital after being evacuated from a nuclear-powered submarine that had been forced to surface off the coast of the island.
As noted by The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Navy has two hospital ships: the USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy. Both are currently in a shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, and have not received any deployment orders. In fact, the Comfort is undergoing repairs that are not expected to be completed until April, and the Mercy is also out of service for months, as it is in the middle of a one-year maintenance period that began last July.
Even if the Pentagon had received orders to send one of the floating medical treatment vessels to Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a request from Danish officials would need to be submitted first before any ship could dock on the island, a U.S. official told the Journal.
Such a request is highly unlikely to be approved. In a scathing social media post, Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, resoundingly rejected the idea of Trump sending a hospital ship to its shores, noting the territory would not need any help from the U.S. to treat its sick.
“It’s a no thank you from here,” Nielsen wrote. “We have a public health care system where treatment is free for citizens. That is a deliberate choice—and a fundamental part of our society. That is not how it works in the USA, where it costs money to see a doctor.”
An exasperated Nielsen added that Greenland is always open to discussions but urged Trump to “talk to us instead of just making more or less random statements on social media.”
Trump has repeatedly threatened to damage the relationship between NATO ally Denmark and the U.S. by continuing to state his desire to take over Greenland.
Trump claims that the U.S. must control the mineral-rich island in the Arctic region for national security reasons.
Last month, the thin-skinned president also warned Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, that he no longer has the “obligation to think purely of Peace” because he was not awarded last year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Asked by NBC News whether using military force to seize the island was an option, Trump replied: “No comment.”
Trump later said that a “framework of a future deal” had been agreed with regard to Greenland to ensure greater U.S. influence on the island, although specific details of the deal were scant.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Pentagon, the Navy, and the White House for comment.
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