A small but growing group of Republicans in Congress is expressing openness to President Trump’s increasingly explicit push to acquire Greenland, along with his desire to punish European allies who resist the idea.
In the days since Mr. Trump began musing openly about taking over the semiautonomous island territory, which is currently controlled by Denmark, many Republican lawmakers have issued vocal warnings against a push to annex Greenland, arguing that it would dangerously divide the United States’ closest allies.
But with the president stepping up his threats and showing no sign of backing down, Republicans across the ideological spectrum are increasingly finding ways to defend or justify his threats — or embrace them altogether.
During an address to Britain’s Parliament in London on Tuesday, Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, said he had spoken “at length” with Mr. Trump and framed his visit as an effort to “encourage our friends and help to calm the waters.”
Mr. Johnson, the first American House speaker to address Britain’s Parliament, did not mention Greenland by name or address the issue directly during his speech, which sought to emphasize the strength of the U.S.-U.K. relationship. But the speaker, who has marched in lock-step with Mr. Trump on almost every issue, implicitly backed the president’s argument that the territory is vital to the national security of the United States.
He also urged British lawmakers and other allies in Europe to support the president’s efforts to maintain “strategic strongholds around the world,” citing threats from China and Russia and singling out the Arctic, as Mr. Trump has in recent weeks, as an area of focus.
“While we can have thoughtful debate among our friends about how best to counter these threats,” Mr. Johnson said, “we all certainly agree they must be countered.”
Still, he has dismissed the idea that the administration would make good on the threats to seize Greenland by force. Last week, Mr. Trump told reporters that he would acquire the island “the easy way” or “the hard way.”
“We don’t anticipate any kind of military intervention,” Mr. Johnson said during an interview with Nigel Farage, a prominent right wing member of Parliament, on Monday. In a series of appearances in British media, Mr. Johnson said that Mr. Trump’s provocations on social media were simply the “certain manner in which he goes about doing things,” but the speaker said that he did not always consider the president’s public remarks a literal reflection of his aims.
“We take him seriously, not always literally,” Mr. Johnson said.
Other Republicans, including some who have at times parted way with the president, have taken a similar position. Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, said that there was “broad bipartisan opposition in Congress to any use of force in relation to Greenland.” But during an interview on CNN on Tuesday, he said that he supported acquiring the territory as a way to counter “the malign influence of Russia and China” and characterized Mr. Trump’s threats and social media provocations as merely a way to “spur conversation.”
Some G.O.P. lawmakers have aligned themselves more squarely with Mr. Trump’s ambition of taking Greenland by force if necessary.
Senator Eric Schmitt, Republican of Missouri, a Trump loyalist, argued over the weekend that the United States was uniquely capable of defending Greenland and criticized European governments as too weak to do so themselves.
“There’s a lot of reasons that the United States has a very important interest in making sure that Greenland is protected,” Mr. Schmitt said during an appearance on Fox News. “Europe can’t protect it, the Danes can’t protect it. That’s just an obvious fact at this point. And so it is in the strategic interest of the United States of America to pursue this.”
And Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, commended Mr. Trump for targeting the territory, saying on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo”: “I believe it is overwhelmingly in America’s national interest to acquire Greenland.”
Still, a number of Republicans have criticized Mr. Trump’s aggression toward Greenland as misguided.
Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, speaking on the Senate floor last Wednesday, called the idea that the United States would take the territory “absurd,” and suggested the president was being given bad advice. A push to take over Greenland, he said in a social media post on Saturday, would be “bad for America, bad for American businesses, and bad for America’s allies.”
“It’s great for Putin, Xi and other adversaries who want to see NATO divided,” Mr. Tillis added.
Other Republicans, including Representatives Blake Moore of Utah and Don Bacon of Nebraska, warned that threatening Greenland amounted to threatening the core of the NATO alliance itself.
“Stop the stupid ‘we want Greenland BS,’” Mr. Bacon wrote in a post on social media in early January.
“If the message is that ‘we need Greenland,’ the truth is that we already have access to everything we could need from Greenland,” Mr. Moore said in a joint statement with Representative Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland. “If we want to deploy more forces or build additional missile defense infrastructure in Greenland, Denmark has given us a green light to do so. Our ally has always accommodated us. Threatening to annex Greenland needlessly undermines that cooperation for no gain.”
Robert Jimison covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on defense issues and foreign policy.
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