Bipartisan Alarm Grows in Congress as Trump’s Greenland Rhetoric Strains NATO Ties

COPENHAGEN — A rare bipartisan congressional delegation arrived in Denmark this week with a message starkly at odds with the rhetoric coming from the White House: the United States remains a steadfast ally of Denmark and Greenland, and talk of acquiring Greenland by force is reckless, destabilizing and potentially catastrophic for NATO.

The delegation, composed of members of both the House and Senate and including Republican Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, met privately with Danish and Greenlandic leaders amid rising anxiety in Europe over President Trump’s repeated comments about “taking” Greenland. Their visit followed days of intense debate across American political media, social platforms and cable news, where lawmakers from both parties have begun openly warning that even the suggestion of military action against a NATO ally could trigger a constitutional crisis at home and irreparable damage abroad.

Representative Madeleine Dean, Democrat of Pennsylvania, who is part of the delegation, described Danish and Greenlandic officials as “warm, gracious, and deeply puzzled.”

“They believe, as we do, that we are the strongest of allies,” Ms. Dean said in an interview. “We have a 225-year relationship and 80 years together in NATO. They don’t understand why the president is talking about Greenland as something to be taken, rather than a partner to be respected.”

Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, has long been strategically important to U.S. defense planning, particularly in the Arctic, where climate change has opened new shipping lanes and intensified competition with Russia and China. The United States already maintains a military presence there, including Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, and has operated as many as 17 installations on the island during the Cold War.

Danish and Greenlandic leaders have repeatedly emphasized that they welcome deeper American cooperation, including expanded basing or joint security initiatives. What they reject outright, they say, is any suggestion of annexation or coercion.

That distinction has been lost, critics argue, in President Trump’s increasingly aggressive language, which he has repeated almost daily. On social media and in public remarks, the president has framed Greenland as a strategic asset the United States “needs,” at times suggesting that economic pressure or military force could be used to obtain it.

Those remarks have triggered an unusual level of Republican dissent.

“There are so many Republicans mad about this,” Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican and retired Air Force general, said in an interview with a Nebraska news outlet that has since circulated widely on X and other platforms. Mr. Bacon went further in a subsequent appearance, warning that any attempt to invade Greenland would “probably be the end of his presidency.”

“You don’t threaten a NATO ally,” Mr. Bacon said. “Denmark has fought alongside us in Iraq and Afghanistan. Invading an ally would be immoral and wrong, and most Republicans know that.”

Mr. Bacon’s comments were echoed by Senator Murkowski, who has used her social media accounts to stress Greenland’s Indigenous population and their right to self-determination, and by Senator Tillis, who has publicly questioned the legality of unilateral presidential action against an allied democracy.

Legal scholars have amplified those concerns online, noting that under Article I of the Constitution, Congress holds the power to declare war, and that the NATO treaty would be fundamentally undermined if the United States attacked a founding member. Several constitutional law commentators have argued that such an action could meet the threshold for impeachment, a point Mr. Bacon himself raised.

“If a president invaded an ally, a democracy, in violation of a treaty, that’s a high crime and misdemeanor,” he said.

The sense of alarm is not confined to Washington. Danish media and European commentators have described President Trump’s comments as the most serious strain on U.S.-Danish relations since World War II. Students at the University of Copenhagen told Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire and the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that they feel “frustration, disappointment and real distress.”

“They don’t understand why a country that has been a friend for centuries would suddenly turn on them rhetorically,” Ms. Shaheen said. “Denmark was one of the first countries to recognize the United States. Our soldiers have fought and died together.”

Ms. Shaheen emphasized that even talk of military action against Greenland risks fracturing NATO at a moment when unity is critical. European troops have reportedly arrived in Greenland in recent days for security exercises, moves widely interpreted by analysts on social media as both reassurance to Denmark and a signal of deterrence — not against Russia, but against the possibility, however remote, of American overreach.

Across American media platforms, commentators have drawn comparisons between Greenland and other foreign policy flashpoints, often concluding that the analogy fails. Unlike Venezuela, which some Trump allies have portrayed as a hostile or isolated state, Greenland is part of a Western democracy embedded in the NATO alliance system.

“This is a bridge too far,” one widely shared political analysis noted. “You can’t talk about Denmark like it’s an adversary when it’s one of the most reliable allies the U.S. has.”

Even some conservative commentators, typically supportive of Mr. Trump’s confrontational style, have expressed unease. On right-leaning podcasts and opinion feeds, hosts have questioned whether the president’s Greenland rhetoric is intended as leverage or reflects a genuine misunderstanding of alliances — and warned that either explanation carries serious risks.

Danish and Greenlandic officials, for their part, continue to stress cooperation over confrontation. They have pointed out that a 1951 defense agreement already grants the United States broad access to Greenland for military purposes and that they are open to expanding that presence in response to growing Arctic competition.

“What they want,” Ms. Dean said, “is respect and trust. They want to be an ally, not an asset.”

The delegation plans to lay a wreath honoring Danish soldiers who died alongside American forces, a symbolic reminder of the costs shared in defense of the alliance. For many lawmakers, the gesture underscores what they see as the central absurdity of the moment: that a relationship forged in war and sustained over generations could be jeopardized by rhetoric alone.

Whether President Trump will heed the warnings remains unclear. But the message from Copenhagen — delivered by Democrats and Republicans alike — was unmistakable: Greenland is not for sale, not for seizure, and not a bargaining chip. And any attempt to treat it as such would come at a price far higher than the president’s critics say he is prepared to pay.