The Dead Simple Way Trump Could Make Greenland Statehood a Reality, And Greenland Citizens and Denmark Would Love It

President-elect Donald Trump seems serious about making Greenland the 51st state. Even if it were just a possession, however, it would cost a lot less than you would think.

How much less? Chanel Rion of One America News Network managed to do the math: about $57 billion.

That’s how much it would cost the United States to pay every man, woman, and child in Greenland a million dollars. Consider it takes a 51 percent vote for Greenland to split from Denmark — something which, according to Politico, could happen in April along with the island’s parliamentary election.

A 2009 agreement with the country stipulates that it can declare independence that way, and Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede said during his New Year’s Day message that he was planning to look into it.

“Our cooperation with other countries, and our trade relations, cannot continue to take place solely through Denmark,” he said, adding that it was time to shake off colonial “shackles.”

While the move didn’t exactly call for Trump to be their savior, the fact that this is happening in tandem with Trump’s inauguration can’t exactly be a coincidence.

Trump, after all, has said that he thinks “the ownership and control of Greenland [by the United States] is an absolute necessity.” Also, Don Jr. made a visit to the island in the run-up to the new administration taking office:

And unlike similar talk about Canada (calling Justin Trudeau the governor of the 51st state just isn’t as fun now that he’s on his way out and the Liberal Party will elect a new sacrificial lamb before parliamentary elections) or the Panama Canal, Greenland really is doable.

After all, Rion pointed out, the money to operate Greenland — which has a permanent population of roughly 60,000 individuals — isn’t that much of a dent in our pockets. The rewards, meanwhile, are great.

“Greenland has not broken away from Denmark because it’s economically reliant on them. Denmark gives Greenland an annual budget of about $511 million U. S. dollars, roughly,” Rion said during her segment

“This accounts for over half of Greenland’s public budget. And though Greenland is rich in natural resources, Denmark seems to have used environmentalism as an excuse to hold the island back,” she added.

“Perhaps the Danes know, the moment Greenland becomes viable, it’ll break away. Perhaps it’s that Denmark just doesn’t have the chops to develop their golden goose, and so they would rather just feed it, like a distant pet. And while most of Greenland is uninhabitable, it is an icy treasure land of rare minerals and energy.”

These resources aren’t just a cash cow: “Greenland has significant deposits of zinc, lead, gold, diamonds, and rare earth elements, like lithium and graphite. The last two are essential for electric vehicles, turbines, and other clean energy products,” Rion noted. “Currently, China has monopolized extracting these rare elements. That’s a problem.”

There are also significant oil and natural gas deposits off of its coast, something the U.S. could use to keep it and its allies energy-independent.

All for just a million dollars a person. Heck, give Denmark that much and spend the rest on infrastructure. It’s still less than our aid package to Ukraine.

I did the math.

If we gave EVERY Greenlander a MILLION DOLLARS – that would cost us $57 Billion total.

Less than a THIRD of what we’ve given Ukraine.

It takes a 51% vote to split from Denmark.

How many Greenlanders do you think would go for it? pic.twitter.com/6ywkAEoppr

— Chanel Rion OAN (@ChanelRion) January 8, 2025

And Rion isn’t the only one probing the opportunity. In a report the day after Rion’s segment aired, The Economist also noted that if “America offered merely our crude valuation of the flow of future taxes, it would amount to nearly $1m per inhabitant. Given the territory’s riches and importance, America could probably make every Greenlander a multimillionaire and still benefit enormously from the purchase.”

The U.K. outlet also highlighted the strategic importance of the purchase.

“The island sits between America and Russia in a part of the world that is becoming more navigable as Arctic ice melts,” the Economist noted.

“Although America’s Pituffik Space Base on the territory’s north-west coast already provides the armed forces with missile-warning sensors, an American Greenland might better monitor the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap, a strip of the Atlantic Ocean that is the access route for Russian submarines to America’s east coast, and to the North Atlantic.

“On top of this, Greenland’s resource wealth is immense. It has known reserves of 43 of the 50 minerals deemed ‘critical’ by America’s government, including probably the largest deposits of rare earths outside China. These are crucial to military kit and green-energy equipment. Wells off Greenland’s coast could yield 52bn barrels of oil, about 3 percent of the world’s proven reserves, according to an estimate in 2008 by the U.S. Geological Survey.”

In fact, this makes so much sense that the only real argument against this is the inflationary bubble caused by giving every Greenlander $1 million to spend as they like when they live on an island of 60,000. Fine: Come up with a longer-term plan to give every resident that money, and it still works out.

This is practically a slam-dunk. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. Not only that, the island is of critical importance to U.S. interests, and the leader is practically begging to get out of his current situation. What more could one ask for?

Well, Senate passage, for one. It’s worth noting that the Democrats were willing to run over the filibuster to add Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., when they controlled all the levers of government, and those two were both far less self-sustaining states than Greenland would be. Perhaps it’s enough to have it as a territory, as well. One way or another, Trump wins, and our enemies lose. That’s making America — and Nuuk — great again.

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