At least three Americans with connections to President Donald Trump have reportedly been carrying out covert influence operations in Greenland, prompting Denmark to summon a top US diplomat to the country.
Danish public broadcaster DR reported on Wednesday that unnamed government and security sources in Greenland and the U.S. believe that at least three people with ties to Trump have been carrying out covert influence operations in the territory.
It comes after Trump’s repeated threats to annex the territory via military force.
Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO ally of the U.S., strongly rejects Trump’s proposal to take over the strategically located, mineral-rich Arctic island, making clear that the land is not for sale.
At least eight sources within Greenland’s government and security apparatus believe that a handful of Americans with ties to Trump are conducting covert intelligence operations, DR reported.
One of those people allegedly compiled a list of U.S.-friendly Greenlanders, collected names of people opposed to Trump and got locals to point out cases that could be used to cast Denmark in a negative light in in U.S. media. Two others have tried to nurture contacts with politicians, businesspeople and locals, DR reported.
An influence operation is an organized effort to shape how people in a society think in order to achieve certain political, military or other objectives.
The local sources told DR about the alleged American operation believe that the U.S. is attempting to weaken relations between Denmark and Greenland.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said “any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the Kingdom will of course be unacceptable.”
“We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland and its position in the Kingdom of Denmark,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in a statement. “It is therefore not surprising if we experience outside attempts to influence the future of the Kingdom in the time ahead.”
“In that light, I have asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to summon the U.S. chargé d’affaires for a meeting at the Ministry,” he added.
Cooperation between the governments of Denmark and Greenland “is close and based on mutual trust,” he added.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2101032/greenland-trump-Denmark-influence-spies
“I’ve had the privilege of meeting a lot of foreign leaders. They’re laughing behind his back,” he said at Politico’s California summit. “Do not conflate what I just said with the meeting I had with the Denmark delegation [California and Denmark just made a comprehensive agreement on climate and tech]. I’ve had dozens and dozens, ambassadors [who] met with him. They’re laughing behind his back. He’s being played everywhere. It’s an embarrassment.”
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/gavin-newsom-on-people-talking-about-trump
Following a historic gathering at the White House, where President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with seven European leaders in an unprecedented show of solidarity, Trump suffered a significant setback.
CNN broke into regular broadcasting with urgent news, revealing that the US President is under enormous pressure as major hurdles emerge in his bid to bring the Ukraine war to an end. Reporter Kimberly Dozier observed, “The fact that he feels he’s got to check in with Putin right away and… we get news that Putin is saying, ‘By the way, no NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine. That is unacceptable,’ still feels like Trump needs Putin’s approval.”
This development followed reports that Trump had stepped out of discussions with European leaders to place a call to the Russian president. This came just days after a lip reader revealed the chilling 3-word promise (“I’ll help you.”) that Trump whispered into Putin’s ear at their Alaska summit.
The demonstration of backing for Zelenskyy included French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, reports the Express.
After the phone conversation, the Kremlin dismissed speculation about a potential meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, even as Trump continued pushing for the two leaders to hold a summit aimed at resolving the Ukraine conflict. The US leader confessed that the conflict was “a tough one” to resolve, stating, “We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks. It’s possible that he doesn’t want to make a deal.”
On Monday, Putin expressed to Trump that he was “open” to direct talks with Ukraine. However, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov diluted this already vague commitment the following day, suggesting that a meeting would need to be prepared “gradually… starting with the expert level and thereafter going through all the required steps.”
Meanwhile, Dmitry Polyanskiy, a Russian deputy representative to the UN, told the BBC that “Nobody [had] rejected” the chance for direct talks, but it shouldn’t just be a “but it shouldn’t be a meeting for the sake of a meeting.”
Kimberly, speaking on CNN, added, “It’s got to be very disturbing to Zelensky sitting there, but of course Zelensky was a good actor he’s playing it cool, he’s not biting on any of the questions he got.
“Hopefully, what’s going to happen is they’re going to go into this meeting with European officials and the Europeans are saying ‘We need to put these troops on the ground inside Ukraine and it’s not Vladimir Putin’s business.”
On Wednesday, representatives from 30 different countries will gather at the Pentagon for meetings aimed at finalizing what each nation is willing to commit to Ukraine’s national security.
This includes Tony Radakin, the chief of the defense staff and leader of the British armed forces. He is anticipated to inform his American counterparts that the UK is ready to deploy troops to defend Ukraine’s skies and seas, but not to the frontline with Russia.
On Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Keir Starmer held a virtual call to brief over 30 other world leaders on the discussions that took place at the White House on Monday.
Following this, Downing Street announced: “The prime minister outlined that coalition of the willing planning teams would meet with their US counterparts in the coming days to further strengthen plans to deliver robust security guarantees and prepare for the deployment of a reassurance force if the hostilities ended.”
It comes after an expert warned Trump is displaying “classic signs” of a horror disease that “will get worse..”
https://www.themirror.com/entertainment/tv/cnn-breaking-news-donald-trump-1341186
President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders on Monday in a follow up to last week’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. While the back-to-back, high-stakes meetings between the warring leaders and their regional partners are aimed at finally bringing in an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine, Trump can’t seem to stop undermining the delicate negotiations by publicly parroting Kremlin talking points.
In a Tuesday morning interview with Fox News, Trump falsely claimed that Putin and Russia had “gotten” Crimea “from Obama,” describing Russia’s annexation of the territory as a “real estate deal.” Crimea, a peninsula in the north of the Black Sea, was invaded and occupied by Russia in 2014.
“The war started over NATO and Crimea and they wanted Crimea back,” Trump said. “That was given — not a shot fired —- by President Obama in perhaps the worst real estate deal I’ve ever seen.”
“Crimea is the apple of Ukraine, it is so beautiful. And Obama gave it away. … He demanded they let it go, Russia took it like candy from a baby. It was really Obama’s, that was pure and simple Obama’s fault, what a terrible thing,” Trump added.
In the same interview, Trump declared that it was “insulting” that Ukraine — which has now been invaded by Russia twice in little more than a decade — had sought to join NATO. “They asked for it and shouldn’t have asked for it. It was insulting,” Trump said. “They could have asked for other things — the other thing they wanted to get Crimea back.”
Trump later insinuated that it was actually Ukraine that had instigated the current war against Russia, telling Fox and Friends that “you don’t take on a nation that is 10 times your size and military experts.” It was, of course, Russia that invaded Ukraine in February 2022, kicking off the war that has now raged for over three years.
Trump rolled out the literal red carpet to receive Putin in Alaska on Friday, even granting the Russian authoritarian a ride in the presidential limousine — an unprecedented honor rarely granted to foreign dignitaries, much less internationally wanted war criminals.
Judging by Trump’s statements following the summit, Putin spent much of their private discussions stroking the president’s ego. On Friday, Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Putin had reassured him that it was actually widespread mail-in voter fraud that had cost him the 2020 election.
“Vladimir Putin said something — one of the most interesting things — he said, ‘your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting,’” Trump recounted. “He said … ‘it’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.” Days later, Trump announced that he would seek to eliminate mail-in voting at a national level, despite lacking the constitutional authority to make any such change to state voting laws.
According to a Monday report from Axios, Trump was so eager to talk to Putin again that he interrupted his meeting with European leaders to speak to the Russian president. According to subsequent reporting from The New York Times, the call lasted around 40 minutes.
Trump apparently left his European counterparts to talk among themselves for the better part of an hour, telling Fox News that it “would be disrespectful to president Putin,” to make the call in their presence.
“It was 1:00 in the morning in Russia,” Trump said. “But he picked it up very happily.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that the global credibility of the United States and its NATO allies is on the line in Ukraine, as U.S. President Donald Trump attempts to end the Russian invasion once and for all.
Why It Matters
Macron made the comment after talks in Washington on Monday between Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the leaders of Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the European Union and NATO, following up on Trump’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday.
While no agreement has been reached to end the more than three-year war, Monday’s gathering laid the groundwork for a long-anticipated trilateral meeting between Trump, Zelensky and Putin.
Macron’s warning about the credibility of the U.S. and its allies is a reminder of the far-reaching implications of the peace effort that Trump is promoting.
What To Know
Macron, in an interview with NBC News, said that how the United States and its allies handled the war in Ukraine would have global consequences for their credibility.
“What’s happening in Ukraine is extremely important for Ukrainian people, obviously, but for the whole security of Europe, because we speak about containing a nuclear power, which decided just not to respect international borders anymore,” he said.
“And I think it’s very important for your country because it’s a matter of credibility,” he said. “The way we will behave in Ukraine will be a test for our collective credibility in the rest of the world.”
Macron said Trump was confident he could reach a deal to end the war in Ukraine, which he welcomed while stressing that any agreement must not have negative consequences for Ukraine and its European allies.
“My point … is to be sure that this deal is not detrimental to Ukraine and Europe,” Macron said.
“All of us, we want a deal, and we want a peace deal. But we want to make sure that this peace, and so this deal, will be something which will allow the Ukrainians to recover their country and live in peace, to be sure the day after this peace deal that they will have sufficient deterrence power not to be attacked again, and to be sure—for the Europeans—that they will live in peace and security,” he said.
But the French president appeared less upbeat about Putin’s attitude to ending the full-scale invasion Russia launched in 2022.
“When I look at the situation and the facts, I don’t see President Putin very willing to get peace now,” he said, adding, “But perhaps I’m too pessimistic.”
Macron said he still hoped for a ceasefire even though Trump said after meeting Putin on Friday that a ceasefire was not an essential step toward a deal.
“It’s impossible for a Ukrainian president and Ukrainian officials to have talks about peace as their country is being destroyed and as their civilians are being killed,” Macron said, adding that security guarantees for Ukraine were vital.
“If you make any peace deal without security guarantees, Russia will never respect its words, will never comply with its own commitments,” Macron said.
Macron also said that in the absence of progress, Russia should be hit with more sanctions.
“I’m very much in favor of the fact that if, at the end of the day, there is no serious progress during the bilateral, or if there is a refusal of the trilateral meeting and, or if the Russians don’t comply with this approach, yes, we have to increase the sanctions, secondary and primary sanctions, in order to increase the pressure on the Russians to do so,” he said, according to a transcript of the interview provided by NBC.
What People Are Saying
French President Emmanuel Macron told NBC: “Your president, indeed, is very confident about the capacity he has to get this deal done, which is good news for all of us and can break this—I would say this daily killings, which are the responsibility of the Russian aggressor. So I think it’s great news. My point—and this is why we’ve worked so hard during the past few months and we need this convergence—is to be sure that this deal is not detrimental to Ukraine and Europe.”
What Happens Next
Trump has established a two-week timeline for determining diplomatic progress, saying both sides would soon know “whether or not we’re going to solve this or is this horrible fighting going to continue.”
The proposed Putin-Zelensky meeting is expected to precede trilateral discussions that include Trump, though specific timing and location remain undetermined. Russian officials have indicated a willingness to continue direct negotiations, but full agreement on meeting parameters has not been confirmed.
https://www.newsweek.com/macron-nato-trump-nuclear-russia-credibility-warning-2115451
President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today at the White House, and boasted about his ability to end wars, making one major slip in the process.
The two world leaders met at the White House on Monday afternoon, along with a delegation of European leaders from the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Finland, the European Union, and NATO. The leaders showed up to support Zelensky at the high-stakes meeting that could determine the future of his country. Discussing the possibility of a ceasefire, Trump bragged about his track record of “ending wars.”
“I’ve ended six wars. I thought maybe this would be the easiest one. And it’s not. It’s a tough one,” Trump claimed. It comes amid alarming fears over the president’s health due to an injury being spotted.
As Trump rambled about the wars he has claimed credit for ending, he made a major slip, calling the Democratic Republic of Congo, the “Republic of the Condo.” It comes after the Prime Minister of Italy mocks Trump with a brutal eye roll.
On X, a viewer pointed it out, writing, “Yes, he just said ‘Republic of the Condo.’ Can’t get his mind away from real estate!”
Trump immediately corrected himself, briefly closing his eyes as he gathered his thoughts. The high-stakes meeting, which had many eyes on it, was an opportunity for Trump to shut down rumors that he is experiencing a cognitive decline.
On numerous occasions recently, Trump has slipped up and misspoken, causing viewers to call his mental capacity into question.
Today’s mistake is not the first one Trump has made when speaking about the Congo. He was accused of not knowing anything about the country, after flippantly saying, “many people come from the Congo. I don’t know what that is.”
On X, another user added, “Trump’s Freudian slip “Republic of the Condo” in his press conference reveals his preferred solution to all international conflicts: turn them into luxury resorts!”
Today’s meeting comes just days after President Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader rejected a cease-fire and called on Ukraine to cede land in the country’s east in exchange for a freeze in the front line elsewhere.
Trump and Zelensky’s last meeting in February ended abruptly and without any resolve. The two butted heads and Trump grew impatient with the Ukrainian president, telling him, “You’ve got to be more thankful, because, let me tell you, you don’t have the cards. With us, you have the cards, but without us, you don’t have any cards.”
JD Vance, who called Zelensky ungrateful during their February meeting, was also present today. It comes as Trump lets slip his true feelings about his wife Melania with a gesture at Zelensky showdown.
https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/trumps-geography-gaffe-during-zelensky-35752320
President Donald Trump said he would welcome anyone but Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates as the U.S. is faced with having to refinance about $9 trillion in debt.
Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo sat down with Trump for an interview that aired Sunday, when she asked the president how he was going to deal with the $9 trillion in debt that is due this year.
Trump said he was going to refinance the $9 trillion as short-term debt because “we have a stupid person” at the Federal Reserve.
The president explained his desire for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates so the U.S. does not have to pay for 10 years of debt at a higher rate.
But on Thursday, the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, said the Republicans’ plan to cap a tax that states use to raise money for Medicaid did not pass the narrow rules of budget reconciliation, known as the “Byrd rule,” which determines what can be included in a reconciliation bill.
To make matters worse for Republicans, MacDonough’s office struck key parts of the immigration provisions in the bill. Specifically, she killed a $1,000 fee for anyone applying for asylum, a $100 minimum fee to advance a continuance in an immigration court, a $250 minimum fee to apply for the diversity visa lottery, a mandatory $400 processing fee for the same visa, a $5,000 minimum fee to sponsor a child who comes to the United States unaccompanied and money to expand the expedited removal of noncitizen immigrants arrested for crimes.
