Maddow Blog | Team Trump steps up its intelligence-gathering efforts in, of all places, Greenland

In March, erstwhile the White House dispatched an uninvited delegation to Greenland, the determination was intended to beryllium a charm violative of sorts. Vice President JD Vance, his woman and his colleagues hoped their sojourn to the land — which Donald Trump is seemingly determined to get — would marque a bully opening content with locals.

That did not work. As my MSNBC workfellow Clarissa-Jan Lim explained, officials successful Greenland made a bid of efforts to marque wide that they did not privation the U.S. delegation to beryllium there. Soon after, Trump nevertheless said: “We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%.” He added that there’s a “good anticipation that we could bash it without subject force” but said helium wasn’t going to “take thing disconnected the table.”

In April, the White House besides reportedly began enactment connected a fiscal estimate gauging what it would outgo to power Greenland.

In May, the process appears to beryllium ongoing. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump medication is “stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drafting America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s run to instrumentality implicit the island, according to 2 radical acquainted with the effort.” The nonfiction added:

Several high-ranking officials nether Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a “collection accent message” to intelligence-agency heads past week. They were directed to larn much astir Greenland’s independency question and attitudes connected American assets extraction connected the island. The classified connection asked agencies, whose tools see surveillance satellites, communications intercepts and spies connected the ground, to place radical successful Greenland and Denmark who enactment U.S. objectives for the island.

The Journal’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC oregon NBC News, went connected to enactment that collection-emphasis messages assistance acceptable “intelligence-agency priorities, directing resources and attraction to high-interest targets.”

Or enactment different way, the White House is inactive rather superior astir taking implicit the island.

Administration officials had an accidental to propulsion backmost against the reporting, but they did mostly the opposite. A National Security Council spokesperson told the Journal, “The president has been precise wide that the U.S. is acrophobic astir the information of Greenland and the Arctic.”

Similarly, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard complained astir classified leaks, but she did not accidental that the leak was untrue.

This comes connected the heels of Trump’s latest quality connected NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” which included a question from Kristen Welker astir whether he’d regularisation retired the usage of subject unit to instrumentality Greenland. “I don’t regularisation it out,” he replied. “I don’t accidental I’m going to bash it, but I don’t regularisation retired anything. No, not there. We request Greenland precise badly. Greenland is simply a precise tiny magnitude of people, which we’ll instrumentality attraction of, and we’ll cherish them, and each of that.”

The latest nationalist Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll recovered that 76% of Americans reason trying to instrumentality power of Greenland. By each appearances, the White House doesn’t overmuch care.

But this isn’t the lone constituency that matters. The Wall Street Journal besides reported that connected the land itself, Trump’s unusual territorial ambitions person pushed Greenland’s colonisation toward its assemblage power, Denmark. “In caller weeks,” the nonfiction noted, “Greenland and Denmark person moved person unneurotic arsenic officials successful Nuuk and Copenhagen sought to reinvigorate their narration and to look with caller eyes astatine outstanding problems.”

In different words, the American president’s efforts person been having the other of their intended effect.

This nonfiction was primitively published connected MSNBC.com