President Donald Trump shared what appeared to be a message from French President Emmanuel Macron questioning his moves on Greenland amid the Trump Administration’s renewed push to take control of the territory.
“My friend, We are totally in line on Syria. We can do great things on Iran,” read the message, which was attached as a screenshot to Trump’s Truth Social post late Monday night, early Tuesday. “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.”
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Macron also offered to host a G7 meeting in Paris after the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week.
“Let us try to build great things : 1) i can set up a g7 meeting after Davos in Paris on thursday afternoon. I can invite the ukrainians, the danish, the syrians and the russians in the margins 2) let us have a dinner together in Paris together on thursday before you go back to the us,” the message read.
Trump did not include a reason for sharing the message, captioning the post only with “Note from President Emmanuel Macron, of France.” TIME has reached out to the White House and Macron’s official residence, the Élysée Palace, for comment. AFP reported that the French President’s entourage confirmed the authenticity of the message.
Trump also shared a message from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte after a phone call concerning Greenland assuring Trump that he is “committed to finding a way forward on Greenland.”
“As I expressed to everyone, very plainly, Greenland is imperative for National and World Security,” Trump said in a post early Tuesday, adding that he would be meeting with “various parties” about Greenland in Davos. “There can be no going back — On that, everyone agrees!”
Since the U.S.’s military intervention in Venezuela and capture of its leader Nicolás Maduro at the start of the year, Trump has ramped up his effort to wrest control of Greenland, which is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Both the E.U. and Greenland have objected to Trump’s claims over the territory, and the dispute threatens to unravel the NATO defense alliance and upend the U.S.’s relationship with its allies.
Over the weekend, Trump threatened to impose a 10% tariff on European allies from Feb. 1, which would increase to 25% in June, unless Denmark agrees to sell Greenland to the U.S. He also suggested that the use of force was not off the table in a letter sent to Norway’s leader Jonas Gahr Støre.
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace,” Trump said in the letter.
Trump has also sparred with Macron in recent days. While the E.U. weighs potential retaliatory tariffs of €93 billion ($108 billion) on U.S. goods among other countermeasures, Macron has called Trump’s tariff threat over Greenland “unacceptable” and pushed for the E.U. to use its anti-coercion instrument for the first time, which could restrict U.S. participation in the E.U. market. Trump also floated the possibility of imposing 200% tariffs on French wine and champagne after Macron declined to join Trump’s “Board of Peace” over concerns that the board’s charter goes beyond the U.N. mandate allowing it to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza through 2027.
“Nobody wants him because he’s going to be out of office very soon,” Trump told reporters on Monday after his invitation was rebuffed.
Among a number of overnight posts on his social media platform, Trump also shared two apparently AI-generated or edited images depicting a U.S. takeover of Greenland. One showed a photo of him in the Oval Office talking to European leaders back in August with a fake map of Greenland overlaid with the U.S. flag in the background. (Canada and Venezuela were also overlaid with the U.S. flag.) The other showed him, flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance, planting the U.S. flag in Greenland soil.
The post Trump Shares Message From France’s Macron Questioning Greenland Moves appeared first on TIME.
